Remdesivir a game-changer: US; study in China shows no benefit

Washington: The US has expressed optimism over the use of antiviral drug remdesivir as a possible treatment for COVID-19 after a trial, although its manufacturer warned that the drug was yet to be proven safe and studies indicated its effectiveness remains unclear. 

As the US battles to curb the spike in coronavirus cases and death which are currently the highest in the world, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the results of the trial of remdesivir, developed by biotech company Gilead Sciences, reports Efe news.

The NIH reported that patients hospitalised around the world with COVID-19 who received remdesivir (1,063 patients in total) had a 31 per cent faster recovery rate, than those receiving a placebo, which took an average of 15 days.

Based on these preliminary results, the death rate for those taking remdesivir was 8 percent compared to 11.6 percent for those taking a placebo.

One of the White House's top experts in the fight against the pandemic, Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH-affiliated National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), called the findings "quite good news".

In a conflict with findings of two recent trials of the remdesivir drug, a small study in China has found that treatment with Gilead Sciences' investigational antiviral drug does not speed up recovery from COVID-19, compared with placebo in hospitalised patients who are critically ill.

The study involved 237 adults (aged 18 and older) from 10 hospitals in Wuhan, China.

Although this study, published in the journal The Lancet, is a randomised controlled trial (considered the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions) of remdesivir, the authors caution that interpretation of their findings is limited.

This is because the study was stopped early after they were unable to recruit enough patients due to the steep decline in cases in China.