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New clinical trial reports good results for anti-viral remdesivir

Brian Leiter

The news to date has been mixed, but this major study is hopeful:

A government-run study of Gilead’s remdesivir, perhaps the most closely watched experimental drug to treat the novel coronavirus, showed that the medicine is effective against Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus….

During an appearance alongside President Trump in the Oval Office, Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID, said the data are a “very important proof of concept” and that there was reason for optimism, but cautioned the data were not a “knockout"….

The study compared remdesivir to placebo in 800 patients, with neither patients nor physicians knowing who got the drug instead of a placebo, meaning that unconscious biases will not affect the conclusions.

The main goal of the study is the time until patients improve, with different measures of improvement depending on how sick they were to begin with. While the result means that the drug helps patients improve faster, it is not possible to say how dramatic those improvements are.

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6 responses to “New clinical trial reports good results for anti-viral remdesivir”

  1. Roger Albin

    Just a reminder that blinding isn't always perfect. If a drug, for example, has a well recognized and even modestly common side-effect, there can be partial unblinding, often unconscious, that can lead to investigator and subject bias. This may or may not be an issue depending on the trial endpoints. In completed trials with endpoints that have a subjective component, say investigator rating of some clinical feature, and small magnitude effects, this can be a concern.

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  2. Kenny

    "Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (phttps://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19

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  3. Dan Dennis

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52478783

    'Remdesivir cut the duration of symptoms from 15 days down to 11 in clinical trial at hospitals around the world. …

    The impact on deaths is not as clear cut. The mortality rate was 8% in people given remdesivir and 11.6% in those given a placebo, but this result was not statistically significant, meaning scientists cannot tell if the difference is real.

    It is also not clear who is benefiting. Is it allowing people who would have recovered anyway to do so more quickly? Or is it preventing people from needing treatment in intensive care? Did the drug work better in younger or older people? Or those with or without other diseases? Do patients have to be treated early when the virus is thought to peak in the body?'

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  4. Jennifer Hornsby

    Yes. So "has some positive effect on the disease of some covid 19 patients" might be a bit more accurate than "is effective against Covid-19’"
    + I assume they don't have data (or the sample wasn’t big enough) to determine the characteristics of those who got most benefit most from it.

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  5. praymont

    Some reasons for doubt at Respectful Insolence: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/05/01/remdesivir-gilead-wins/

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  6. praymont

    FDA has "granted emergency authorization for Gilead Sciences Inc.'s … experimental COVID-19 treatment called remdesivir." https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fda-approves-emergency-use-of-remdesivir-to-treat-coronavirus-2020-05-01

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