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Saturday, May 2, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Experimental drug shows promise
■ Major study shows remdesivir shortened recovery time for COVID-19 patients and could potentially save lives
By Marilynn Marchione
“What it has proven is that a drug can
block this virus. This will be the standard
of care.”
AP Chief Medical Writer
For the fi rst time, a major
study suggests that an
experimental drug works
against the new coronavirus,
and U.S. government offi cials
said Wednesday that they
would work to make it avail-
able to appropriate patients
as quickly as possible.
In a study of 1,063
patients sick enough to be
hospitalized, Gilead Sci-
ences’s remdesivir shortened
the time to recovery by 31%
— 11 days on average versus
15 days for those just given
usual care, offi cials said. The
drug also might be reduc-
ing deaths, although that’s
not certain from the partial
results revealed so far.
“What it has proven is that
a drug can block this virus,”
the National Institutes of
Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci
said.
“This will be the standard
of care,” and any other po-
tential treatments will now
have to be tested against or
in combination with remdesi-
vir, he said.
No drugs are approved
now for treating the corona-
virus, which has killed about
226,000 people worldwide
since it emerged late last
year in China. An effective
treatment for COVID-19
could have a profound effect
on the pandemic’s impact,
especially because a vaccine
is likely to be a year or more
away.
Fauci revealed the results
while speaking from the
White House. Remdesivir
was being evaluated in at
least seven major studies,
but this one, led by the NIH,
was the strictest test. Inde-
pendent monitors notifi ed
study leaders just days ago
that the drug was working,
so it was no longer ethical
to continue with a placebo
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— Dr. Anthony Fauci,
National Institutes of Health
would not.
Remdesivir is among
dozens of treatments being
tried against the coronavirus
but was the farthest along
in testing. It’s given through
an IV and blocks an enzyme
the virus uses to copy its
genetic material. In animal
tests against SARS and
MERS, diseases caused by
Ulrich Perrey / Getty Images-TNS similar coronaviruses, the
Vials of the drug remdesivir on display during a news
drug helped prevent infec-
conference about the start of a study with use of the
tion and reduced the severity
drug in severely ill patients at the University Hospital Ep- of symptoms when given
pendorf in Hamburg, Germany.
early enough in the course of
illness.
group.
comparison, antiviral drugs
“We are excited and
Dr. Elizabeth Hohmann,
for the fl u shorten illness
optimistic” about the new
who enrolled 49 patients in
by about one day on aver-
results, said Vanderbilt Uni-
the experiment at Massachu- age and only when started
versity’s Dr. Mark Denison.
setts General Hospital, said within a day or two of symp- His lab fi rst tested remdesi-
study leaders were told Tues- toms fi rst appearing.
vir against other coronavi-
day night that the results are
In the remdesivir study,
ruses in 2013 and has done
based on “the fi rst cut of 460 about 8% of those on the
much research on it since,
patients.”
drug died versus 11.6% of
but was not involved in the
“There’s over 1,000 in the the comparison group, but
NIH study.
study so there’s a lot more
the difference is not large
“It’s active against every
information to come” and full enough for scientists to say
coronavirus that we’ve ever
results need to be seen, she
the drug was the reason.
tested,” Denison said. “It was
said. “I’m cautiously optimis-
No information was given very hard for the virus to
tic.”
on side effects. Fauci said full develop resistance to remde-
Dr. Babafemi Taiwo, chief results would be published
sivir. That means the drug
of infectious diseases at
in a medical journal soon.
would likely be effective over
Northwestern Medicine,
He said fi nal numbers might longer term use.”
which also participated in
change a bit but that the
The NIH study started in
the study, called the results
study’s overall conclusion
February; the fi rst par-
“really exciting.”
ticipant was a patient in
“For the fi rst time we have
Nebraska who had been
a large, well-conducted trial”
showing a treatment helps,
he said. “This is not a miracle
CBD rich hemp oil & treats
drug ... but it’s defi nitely bet-
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ter than anything we have.”
foods, raw or lightly cooked.
Fauci said the partial
results showed that the drug
had “a clear-cut signifi cant
(406) 380-2729
positive effect,” shorten-
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discharge by four days. By
evacuated from the Dia-
mond Princess cruise ship
docked in Japan. It quickly
enrolled its original goal of
440 patients and then was
expanded to give more an-
swers on questions such as
which subgroups may or may
not benefi t, and other factors
that may affect success, such
as how early the drug was
given.
The study only tested the
drug in patients sick enough
to be hospitalized — typical-
ly with pneumonia and often
needing oxygen — so its
safety and effectiveness for
people less ill isn’t known.
The study will continue to
enroll new patients. It was
set up as an umbrella trial
to test many treatments,
although they now will have
to be tested against remdesi-
vir or with it, Fauci said.
Separately on Wednesday,
California-based Gilead
announced partial results
from its own ongoing study
of the drug in severely ill,
hospitalized COVID-19
patients. The company
said patients treated for
fi ve days “achieved similar
improvement” in health as
others treated for 10 days.
However, that result is hard
to interpret because there
is no comparison group of
people getting usual care, so
it’s impossible to know how
much patients would have
improved on their own.
Yet another study tested
remdesivir in severely ill pa-
tients in China, which was
stopped after only 237 of a
planned 453 patients were
enrolled. Partial results
published Wednesday in
the British medical journal
Lancet suggest the drug did
not speed recovery in that
study, but it was too small
to be defi nitive, Fauci and
study leaders said.
Gilead also is testing rem-
desivir in a separate study
of moderately ill coronavirus
patients. No results have yet
been announced from that
study, which does have a
comparison group.
Besides these studies,
Gilead also has given rem-
desivir to more than 1,700
patients on a case-by-case
emergency basis. The drug is
not yet approved anywhere
in the world for any use.
A statement from the
Food and Drug Administra-
tion says that the agency
has been talking with
Gilead “regarding making
remdesivir available to pa-
tients as quickly as possible,
as appropriate.”
Gilead said it was ramp-
ing up production and aims
to have more than 140,000
treatment courses by the
end of May, more than
500,000 by October and more
than 1 million by December.
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