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  • Health: everything there is to know about remdesivir
  • Trial: Remdesivir reduces recovery time compared to Covid-19 in seriously ill patients

In patients with moderate coronavirus pneumonia , the five-day antiviral remdesivir has shown superior clinical improvement over receiving only conventional care . The US multinational Gilead Sciences reported yesterday the first results of a phase III trial that measures the benefit of the drug in hospitalized patients with moderate coronavirus (Covid-19) disease.

The trial compared three groups of patients with moderate pneumonia to receive either randomized conventional care alone or in conjunction with a five-day dose of the intravenous drug or a ten-day regimen.

The data shows that patients in the five-day remdesivir treatment group were 65% more likely to present a clinical improvement on day 11 compared to patients in the standard care group. The odds of clinical improvement with treatment over 10 days were also more favorable than those achieved by standard care alone, but, in this case, without reaching statistical significance. The drug was safe in both groups.

"The results of this study offer additional encouraging data for remdesivir , showing that if we can intervene earlier in the disease process with a five-day course of treatment, we can significantly improve clinical outcomes for these patients, " says Francisco Marty, Infectious Disease Specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston) and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.

The results now presented come from 600 hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and pneumonia without reduced oxygen levels.

This is one of two SIMPLE studies, promoted by Gilead. One of the trials looks at the effect of treatment on the seriously ill and the other on the moderate. Both are carried out in 180 centers in countries with a high prevalence of Covid-19 infection, including Spanish hospitals.

On day 11, a higher proportion of patients was recorded than had improved after five days of receiving remdesivir , compared to the group that only received usual care. There were no statistical differences in terms of greater clinical worsening or mortality between the groups studied.

These results, which are expected to be published in the next few days in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, add to other previous evidence of the benefit of remdesivir in seriously ill patients.

In recent days, The New England Journal of Medicine has published the results of a SIMPLE study focused on critically ill patients. In this case, a clinical improvement was also observed with the five-day dose regimen.

And, another trial, Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT), promoted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the American National Institutes of Health (NIH), has shown the superiority of the drug over placebo in more of a thousand seriously ill.

SPAIN GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO COMPASSIVE USE IN SPECIFIC CASES

As of May 20, access to this drug will be allowed for hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and serious illness, the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (Aemps) reported in a note. Severe disease is defined as patients with an oxygen saturation, 94% in ambient air, who require supplemental oxygen or mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In the application of medicines in special situations is all the information necessary to request compassionate use.

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