"Remdesvir Revealed" as no great shakes (Forbes)
Mark Crispin Miller
Remdesivir Revealed
The full data from the remdesivir trial by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has finally been released, weeks after preliminary results were shared via press release. Those early results generated a great deal of hype and a world wide stampede for the drug. But the release of the full data tells a different story.
The conclusion of the NIH study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, states:
“These preliminary findings support the use of remdesivir for patients who are hospitalized with Covid-19 and require supplemental oxygen therapy. However, given high mortality despite the use of remdesivir, it is clear that treatment with an antiviral drug alone is not likely to be sufficient. Future strategies should evaluate antiviral agents in combination with other therapeutic approaches or combinations of antiviral agents to continue to improve patient outcomes in Covid-19.”
There are a few problems this paragraph highlights.
First, by opening with a reference to the data “preliminary findings” the authors are acknowledging the fact that this is not a definitive study. How could it be with such scant data? Ideally, this NIH trial and other remdesivir trials would continue to gather evidence to support the findings. But the NIH controversially ended their large trial of the drug and Gilead has suspended smaller trials. More study of the drug will still be conducted through the WHO Solidarity Trial and the Inserm DisCoVeRy Trial, so there is at least a glimmer of hope that we will eventually have robust and transparent data that shows the true impact of the drug on viral load.
Click on the link for the rest.