Patients with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, have been recovering quickly after receiving an experimental drug called remdesivir, according to STAT News.
A clinical trial of remdesivir on patients with fever and severe respiratory symptoms such as cough and breathlessness has found the antiviral drug helped them to recover quickly. The patients were discharged in less than a week of treatment.
Lead doctor of the trial and infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago Dr. Kathleen Mullane said, “The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish.”
The researchers said they would comment once the official results of the clinical trial were ready.
Currently, there is no approved therapy for COVID-19, the disease that can cause severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS) and pneumonia in some patients.
However, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been organizing trials of several drugs, including remdesivir.
Remdesivir, developed by Gilead Sciences, was originally tested for the treatment of Ebola but it found little success. However, several animal studies have shown that the drug could help prevent and treat coronaviruses that cause COVID-19, SARS-Cov-1, and MERS.
In February, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that remdesivir has shown some promise at treating COVID-19.
Dr. Mullane said, “Most of our patients are severe and most of them are leaving at six days, so that tells us duration of therapy doesn’t have to be 10 days.”
However, the trial did not include a control group, meaning there was no group that received a placebo instead of remdesivir to compare the results and determine whether the drug is really affecting the condition.
Human trials of remdesivir have been ongoing at other medical centers, as well. Gilead Sciences has been sponsoring trials of the antiviral drug in 2,400 COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms in 152 trial sites across the world. Also, the drug manufacturer is testing the drug in 1,600 COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms in 169 clinical centers.
Gilead Sciences is expecting the results of the trials by the end of April.
“We understand the urgent need for a COVID-19 treatment and the resulting interest in data on our investigational antiviral drug remdesivir,” Gilead Sciences told CNN.
“The totality of the data needs to be analyzed in order to draw any conclusions from the trial,” the company added. “Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.”
