One of the doctors behind a promising remdesivir study, which shows it can be used as a treatment for COVID-19, has called it a ‘glimmer of hope’ and says he is now studying how to use the Ebola drug with other medications to give patients ‘tailored therapies’.
His promising comments came on Thursday morning after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading coronavirus expert, said the drug breakthrough was ‘very important’ and proved that a drug can stop the virus.
In the United States, more than one million people have tested positive and more than 61,000 have died.
The study was government sponsored and involved more than 1,000 patients taking part around the world. It showed that those who were given remdesivir recovered 31 percent faster than the patients who received a placebo drug.
The mortality rate among those who were given the drug was 3.6 percent less than among those who didn’t; it was 8 percent in the drug recipients and 11.6 percent in placebo patients.
While the results do not give a cure-all solution, they have injected the markets with hope and share prices for its producer, Californian company Gilead Sciences, went through the roof.
It came despite the fact that a Chinese study found the drug was not as effective as US enthusiasm for it would suggest.
In an interview with Good Morning America on Thursday, Dr. Aneesh Mehta of Emory University Medical School – one of the institutions which took part in the study – spoke of its success.
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Dr. Aneesh Mehta of Emory University Medical School was one of the dozens of doctors from 47 US institutions which took part in the study. He called it a ‘glimmer of hope’ on Thursday
It gives doctors and disease experts hope that it will enable to the healthcare system to move more seamlessly through the pandemic by treating patients on a faster time scale, which will not only save their lives but also keeps hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with cases.
The study showed that among 1,000 patients from around the world, those who got the drug recovered 31% faster and had a mortality rate 3% lower than those who did not
Dr. Mehta said on Thursday that the next phase would be to study how best to use the drug as part of a combination with others to give patients whose cases vary in their severity the best course of treatment.
‘Having taken care of patients for eight weeks now… we’ve been getting patients better but we’re now looking to find a medication that gets them better and faster and home to their families.
‘Now, we have the first glimmer of hope of something that can do that,’ he said.
He added that while the data was ‘preliminary’, it is promising.
Doctors want to give patients the drug as early as possible after they are diagnosed.
‘Most antivirals tend to work better earlier in the course of disease. We definitely like to offer this earlier. It’s intravenous so can only be given in the hospital but we’re planning to offer it as early as possible,’ he said.
Dr Mehta’s team is now working with the National Institute of Health to combine the drug with others to get even better results, he said.
‘We want to learn what additional medications are needed to really improve the outcome.
‘All patients are different so we want to make sure we’re tailoring their therapy.
‘We want to integrate these therapies into this overall model of care that they are receiving,’ he said.
Shares of Gilead Sciences, the Californian drug manufacturer which makes remdesivir, soared
On Wednesday night, Fauci heralded the trial results as ‘really quite important’.
‘The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.
Dr. Fauci said the results were ‘really quite important’
‘Although a 31 percent improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout 100 percent, it is very important proof of concept.
‘What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,’ he said.
But a separate study out of China has cast doubt on the enthusiasm for it.
The study was published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal and involved 237 people.
It was stopped early because the researchers had difficulty recruiting people when the outbreak was curbed in Wuhan.
Scientists believe the stark contrast in findings may come down to when remdesivir is given.
One patient who was given the drug recalled being unable to breathe until he got remdesivir.
‘It still hurt but it had dropped off quite a bit,’ Chris Kane, 55, said.
On Wednesday, share prices for Gilead Sciences went up by nearly seven percent.
The number of people who have died from coronavirus has risen to 61,568 in the United States, as of this morning
The number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus has risen to 1,065,245 in the United States, as of this morning
