Results from the remdesivir COVID-19 trial are out, and it’s good news
Enlarge / Treatment with the antiviral drug remdesivir shortens the recovery time for patients with COVID-19. (credit: digicomphoto/Getty Images)
On Friday, some good news in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The antiviral drug remdesivir-originally developed as a potential treatment for Ebola-was shown to shorten recovery time for patients infected with the coronavirus. In late April, early results from this phase 3 clinical trial suggested that remdesivir might be of value in treating COVID-19 patients-this new paper confirms that. It's not a cure, but the drug shortened the recovery time from an average of 15 days to 11 days.
The trial involved 1,059 COVID-19 patients across 60 different sites in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Five hundred and thirty-eight patients were treated with a 10-day course of remdesivir; the other 521 patients were given a course of placebo on the same schedule. The patients were assessed daily, both to determine the severity of their symptoms as well as any side effects that could be caused by the drug, which interferes with the the virus' ability to copy its RNA.
What was this trial looking at?The main thing being measured in this study was how long a patient took to recover, using an eight-point clinical scale that ranged from "not hospitalized," through increasing levels of care required all the way up to "death." Secondary outcomes for the trial looked at mortality at two and four weeks after treatment began, as well as any serious side effects that occurred during the trial.
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