COVID-19 patients' condition improves after receiving Remdesivir: study

A majority of a small group of patients treated with experimental drug Remdesivir for COVID-19 have showed improvements in their condition, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Friday.

Remdesivir, made by American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, is not yet licensed or approved anywhere globally and has not been identified as a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.

A total of 53 patients hospitalized with severe complications of COVID-19 were treated with the antiviral drug on an individual compassionate use basis, but not a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

"The majority of patients in this international cohort demonstrated clinical improvement and no new safety signals were identified with Remdesivir treatment," Gilead said in a statement.

Nearly two thirds of the patients in the study were on mechanical ventilation at baseline. Treatment with Remdesivir resulted in an improvement in oxygen support class for 68 percent of the patients over a median follow-up of 18 days from the first dose of Remdesivir, according to the study.

More than half of the patients on mechanical ventilation were extubated and nearly half of all patients were discharged from the hospital following treatment with Remdesivir.

After 28 days of follow-up, the cumulative incidence of clinical improvement, defined as discharge from the hospital and/or at least a two-point improvement from baseline on a predefined six-point scale, is 84 percent, according to the study.

Clinical improvement is less frequent among patients on invasive ventilation than non-invasive ventilation and among patients over 70 years old, according to the study.

Compassionate use data have limitations due to the small size of the cohort, the relatively short duration of follow-up, potential missing data due to the nature of the program and the lack of a randomized control group, Gilead said.

"Currently there is no proven treatment for COVID-19. We cannot draw definitive conclusions from these data, but the observations from this group of hospitalized patients who received Remdesivir are hopeful," said Jonathan Grein, director of Hospital Epidemiology of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, lead author of the study.

"We look forward to the results of controlled clinical trials to potentially validate these findings," he said.