According to a preliminary data analysis from a randomized, controlled trial involving 1063 patients, which began on February 21 (known as the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial, or ACTT) that the hospitalized patients with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received placebo. The National Institutes of Health, is the first clinical trial launched in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19.
Based upon the review of the data, it was noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level.
Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059).
Remdesivir, is an investigational broad-spectrum antiviral treatment administered via daily infusion for 10 days. It has shown promise in animal models for treating SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) infection and has been examined in various clinical trials.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32275812
Background: Remdesivir, a nucleotide analogue prodrug that inhibits viral RNA polymerases, has shown in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2.
Methods: We provided remdesivir on a compassionate-use basis to patients hospitalized with Covid-19, the illness caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2. Patients were those with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who had an oxygen saturation of 94% or less while they were breathing ambient air or who were receiving oxygen support. Patients received a 10-day course of remdesivir, consisting of 200 mg administered intravenously on day 1, followed by 100 mg daily for the remaining 9 days of treatment. This report is based on data from patients who received remdesivir during the period from January 25, 2020, through March 7, 2020, and have clinical data for at least 1 subsequent day.
Results: Of the 61 patients who received at least one dose of remdesivir, data from 8 could not be analyzed (including 7 patients with no post-treatment data and 1 with a dosing error). Of the 53 patients whose data were analyzed, 22 were in the United States, 22 in Europe or Canada, and 9 in Japan. At baseline, 30 patients (57%) were receiving mechanical ventilation and 4 (8%) were receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. During a median follow-up of 18 days, 36 patients (68%) had an improvement in oxygen-support class, including 17 of 30 patients (57%) receiving mechanical ventilation who were extubated. A total of 25 patients (47%) were discharged, and 7 patients (13%) died; mortality was 18% (6 of 34) among patients receiving invasive ventilation and 5% (1 of 19) among those not receiving invasive ventilation.
Conclusion: In this cohort of patients hospitalized for severe Covid-19 who were treated with compassionate-use remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%). Measurement of efficacy will require ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled trials of remdesivir therapy. (Funded by Gilead Sciences)
https://mbio.asm.org/content/9/2/e00221-18
Emerging coronaviruses (CoVs) cause severe disease in humans, but no approved therapeutics are available.
The CoV nsp14 exoribonuclease (ExoN) has complicated development of antiviral nucleosides due to its proofreading activity. We recently reported that the nucleoside analogue (remdesivir) potently inhibits human and zoonotic CoVs in vitro and in a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) mouse model.
However, studies with remdesivir have not reported resistance associated with remdesivir, nor do we understand the action of remdesivir in wild-type (WT) proofreading CoVs. Here, we show that remdesivir inhibits murine hepatitis virus (MHV) with similar 50% effective concentration values (EC50) as SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
Passage of WT MHV in the presence of the remdesivir parent nucleoside selected two mutations in the nsp12 polymerase at residues conserved across all CoVs that conferred up to 5.6-fold resistance to remdesivir, as determined by EC50. The resistant viruses were unable to compete with WT in direct coinfection passage in the absence of remdesivir. Introduction of the MHV resistance mutations into SARS-CoV resulted in the same in vitro resistance phenotype and attenuated SARS-CoV pathogenesis in a mouse model.
Finally, we demonstrate that an MHV mutant lacking ExoN proofreading was significantly more sensitive to remdesivir. Combined, the results indicate that remdesivir interferes with the nsp12 polymerase even in the setting of intact ExoN proofreading activity and that resistance can be overcome with increased, nontoxic concentrations of remdesivir, further supporting the development of remdesivir as a broad-spectrum therapeutic to protect against contemporary and emerging CoVs.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352771420300380
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext
Background: No specific antiviral drug has been proven effective for treatment of patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Remdesivir (GS-5734), a nucleoside analogue prodrug, has inhibitory effects on pathogenic animal and human coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in vitro, and inhibits Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS-CoV-1, and SARS-CoV-2 replication in animal models.
Methods: We did a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial at ten hospitals in Hubei, China. Eligible patients were adults (aged ≥18 years) admitted to hospital with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, with an interval from symptom onset to enrolment of 12 days or less, oxygen saturation of 94% or less on room air or a ratio of arterial oxygen partial pressure to fractional inspired oxygen of 300 mm Hg or less, and radiologically confirmed pneumonia. Patients were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to intravenous remdesivir (200 mg on day 1 followed by 100 mg on days 2–10 in single daily infusions) or the same volume of placebo infusions for 10 days. Patients were permitted concomitant use of lopinavir–ritonavir, interferons, and corticosteroids. The primary endpoint was time to clinical improvement up to day 28, defined as the time (in days) from randomisation to the point of a decline of two levels on a six-point ordinal scale of clinical status (from 1=discharged to 6=death) or discharged alive from hospital, whichever came first. Primary analysis was done in the intention-to-treat (ITT) population and safety analysis was done in all patients who started their assigned treatment. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04257656.
Findings: Between Feb 6, 2020, and March 12, 2020, 237 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to a treatment group (158 to remdesivir and 79 to placebo); one patient in the placebo group who withdrew after randomisation was not included in the ITT population.
Remdesivir use was not associated with a difference in time to clinical improvement. Although not statistically significant, patients receiving remdesivir had a numerically faster time to clinical improvement than those receiving placebo among patients with symptom duration of 10 days or less. Adverse events were reported in 102 (66%) of 155 remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo recipients. Remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.
Interpretation: In this study of adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits. However, the numerical reduction in time to clinical improvement in those treated earlier requires confirmation in larger studies.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/in-depth/covid-19-cure-spotlight-on-remdesivir/ar-BB13yg3w?li=AAggbRN
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-grants-emergency-ok-to-use-remdesivir-for-covid-19-/1826112
https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/niaid-trial-remdesivir-covid-19-data/
