Hopes rise on coronavirus drug remdesivir

www.nature.com /articles/d41586-020-01295-8
Heidi Ledford
7-8 minutes
A patient at the intensive care unit receives treatment from two hospital workers in Hefei, China

Coronavirus causes severe respiratory illness in some people.Credit: Zhang Yazi/China News Service via Getty

An experimental drug — and one of the world’s best hopes against COVID-19 — could shorten the time to recovery from coronavirus infection, according to the largest and most rigorous clinical trial of the compound.

The experimental drug, called remdesivir, interferes with replication of some viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the current pandemic. On 29 April, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), announced that a clinical trial of more than a thousand people showed that people taking remdesivir recovered in 11 days on average, compared to 15 days for those on a placebo.

More Encouraging Signs for Remdesivir as COVID-19 Treatment

Alice Park
5-7 minutes
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Researchers at University of Chicago reported promising results from a small study of remdesivir in treating people with COVID-19.

The findings were not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but revealed in an internal video discussion of the drug trial among University of Chicago faculty that was obtained by STAT.

The study included 125 people with COVID-19, all of whom were treated with the remdesivir, which is not currently approved in the U.S. for treating any disease. Of the 125 patients in the Chicago study, 113 had severe disease, meaning they had difficulty breathing. In the video discussion, Kathleen Mullane, a professor of medicine at the university who is overseeing the trial, said most of the patients taking the drug had improved enough to be discharged from the hospital, and only two died. Mullane was not available to discuss the results, but in a statement, a university spokesperson said “Partial data from an ongoing clinical trial is by definition incomplete and should never be used to draw conclusions about the safety or efficacy of a potential treatment that is under investigation. In this case, information from an internal forum for research colleagues concerning work in progress was released without authorization. Drawing any conclusions at this point is premature and scientifically unsound.”