A new study with the drug remedesivir is being released and it’s reportedly showing great signs of effectively treating patients with severe COVID-19:
CNBC – Gilead Sciences said Wednesday preliminary results of a coronavirus drug trial showed at least 50% of patients treated with a 5-day dosage of antiviral drug remdesivir improved and more than half were discharged from the hospital within two weeks.
Shares of Gilead were up more than 7% in premarket trading.
The clinical trial involved patients with severe cases of Covid-19. The severe study is “single-arm,” meaning it did not evaluate the drug against a control group of patients who didn’t receive the drug.
The study tracked two groups of patients who were hospitalized with Covid-19. One group received a 5-day treatment of remdesivir, while the other group took the drug for 10 days. The researchers said more than half of the patients in both treatment groups were discharged from the hospital within 14 days. They said 64.5% of the patients who received the shorter treatment course were discharged, compared with 53.8% of the group who were treated for 10 days.
“These data are encouraging as they indicate that patients who received a shorter, 5-day course of remdesivir experienced similar clinical improvement as patients who received a 10-day treatment course,” said Aruna Subramanian, a lead investigator of the study.
I don’t believe the full study has been released yet, so I am not sure exactly what they mean by “severe” cases. According to Bloomberg News, the clinical trial “measured how quickly patients no longer needed supplemental oxygen therapy”, so it sounds like they were in respiratory distress or possibly respiratory failure.
If this is the case, the results are indeed promising.
In terms of remedesivir’s history, CNBC writes “Remdesivir has shown some promise in treating SARS and MERS, which are also caused by coronaviruses. Some health authorities in the U.S., China and other parts of the world have been using remdesivir, which was tested as a possible treatment for the Ebola outbreak, in hopes that the drug can reduce the duration of Covid-19 in patients.”