It comes days after another report of rapid recovery in fever and
respiratory symptoms in some patients with Covid-19 who were treated with
remdesivir at the University of Chicago Medicine hospital.
A closely-watched Gilead
Sciences Inc experimental antiviral drug failed to help patients with
severe Covid-19 in a clinical trial conducted in China, but the drugmaker said
the findings were inconclusive because the study was terminated early.
Gilead shares closed down 4.3% after the data was inadvertently released and first reported by the Financial Times. It comes days after another report detailed rapid recovery in fever and respiratory symptoms in some patients with Covid-19 - the sometimes deadly respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus - who were treated with remdesivir at the University of Chicago Medicine hospital.
Interest in
Gilead's remdesivir has been high as there are currently no approved treatments
or preventive vaccines for Covid-19, and doctors are desperate for anything
that might alter the course of the disease that attacks the lungs and can shut
down other organs in extremely severe cases.
In the Chinese
trial remdesivir, given by intravenous infusion, failed to improve patients' condition
or reduce the pathogen's presence in the bloodstream, according to draft
documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization (WHO).
But details were
thin and suggested limitations in interpreting the data that has not yet been
fully reviewed.
A screenshot of
the WHO posting, captured by the medical news website STAT before it was taken
down, said the trial enrolled 237 patients with 158 receiving remdesivir
compared with 79 who got a placebo.
The rate of death
was similar at 13.9% for remdesivir versus 12.8% in the control group.
No comments:
Post a Comment