A majority of a small group of patients showed improvements after being treated with an experimental coronavirus drug made by Gilead Sciences, bolstering hopes for finding a treatment for the disease. The Washington Post reports that this is according to a study by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.
The group of patients received the antiviral drug remdesivir as part of a “compassionate use" trial, not a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that would offer more definitive evidence. Also, the cohort of patients was small, only 53 patients in the US and around the world. Those limiting factors prevent scientists from declaring that the drug works.
Still, the improvements offered positive news about a drug seen by global health authorities as offering the best shot at becoming a treatment for the disease.
“We cannot draw definitive conclusions from these data, but the observations from this group of hospitalised patients who received remdesivir are hopeful,” said Jonathan D Grein, hospital epidemiology director at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre and lead author of the journal article. “We look forward to the results of controlled clinical trials to potentially validate these findings.”
Abstract
Background: Remdesivir, a nucleotide analogue prodrug that inhibits viral RNA polymerases, has shown in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2.
Methods: We provided remdesivir on a compassionate-use basis to patients hospitalized with Covid-19, the illness caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2. Patients were those with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who had an oxygen saturation of 94% or less while they were breathing ambient air or who were receiving oxygen support. Patients received a 10-day course of remdesivir, consisting of 200 mg administered intravenously on day 1, followed by 100 mg daily for the remaining 9 days of treatment. This report is based on data from patients who received remdesivir during the period from January 25, 2020, through March 7, 2020, and have clinical data for at least 1 subsequent day.
Results: Of the 61 patients who received at least one dose of remdesivir, data from 8 could not be analyzed (including 7 patients with no post-treatment data and 1 with a dosing error). Of the 53 patients whose data were analyzed, 22 were in the United States, 22 in Europe or Canada, and 9 in Japan. At baseline, 30 patients (57%) were receiving mechanical ventilation and 4 (8%) were receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. During a median follow-up of 18 days, 36 patients (68%) had an improvement in oxygen-support class, including 17 of 30 patients (57%) receiving mechanical ventilation who were extubated. A total of 25 patients (47%) were discharged, and 7 patients (13%) died; mortality was 18% (6 of 34) among patients receiving invasive ventilation and 5% (1 of 19) among those not receiving invasive ventilation.
Conclusions: In this cohort of patients hospitalized for severe Covid-19 who were treated with compassionate-use remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%). Measurement of efficacy will require ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled trials of remdesivir therapy. (Funded by Gilead Sciences.)
Authors
Jonathan Grein, Norio Ohmagari, Daniel Shin, George Diaz, Erika Asperges, Antonella Castagna, Torsten Feldt, Gary Green, Margaret L Green, François-Xavier Lescure, Emanuele Nicastri, Rentaro Oda, Kikuo Yo, Eugenia Quiros-Roldan, Alex Studemeister, John Redinski, Seema Ahmed, Jorge Bernett, Daniel Chelliah, Danny Chen, Shingo Chihara, Stuart H Cohen, Jennifer Cunningham, Antonella D’Arminio Monforte, Saad Ismail, Hideaki Kato, Giuseppe Lapadula, Erwan L’Her, Toshitaka Maeno, Sumit Majumder, Marco Massari, Marta Mora-Rillo, Yoshikazu Mutoh, Duc Nguyen, Ewa Verweij, Alexander Zoufaly, Anu O Osinusi, Adam DeZure, Yang Zhao, Lijie Zhong, Anand Chokkalingam, Emon Elboudwarej, Laura Telep, Leighann Timbs, Ilana Henne, Scott Sellers, Huyen Cao, Susanna K Tan, Lucinda Winterbourne, Polly Desai, Robertino Mera, Anuj Gaggar, Robert P Myers, Diana M Brainard, Richard Childs, Timothy Flanigan
[link url="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/10/gileads-experimental-drug-remdesivir-shows-hopeful-signs-small-group-coronavirus-patients/"]Full report in The Washington Post[/link]
[link url="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007016?query=featured_coronavirus"]The New England Journal of Medicine abstract[/link]