Scientists still do not have conclusive evidence that the two anti-covid drugs given to Donald Trump are clinically effective.
The UK researcher said that both drugs – Remedivisor and REGN-COV2 – still need to complete the large-scale, randomized trials needed to demonstrate their full potential in covid-19 in patients. And many have criticized U.S. officials for failing to carry out such tests. This undermines efforts to find effective drugs to treat people affected by the disease.
“If President Trump gets better, we still don’t know if those drugs played a role in his recovery. Crit Oxford University professor Martin Landre said they would have been critically important or they would not have played a part. “It means that when it comes to treating a hospitalized patient with covid, we still won’t be more discerning about the usefulness of those drugs.”
In contrast, Britain has adopted a policy of conducting blind, randomized trials to test the effectiveness of the drug through a recovery test program established by Landre and Peter Horby of Oxford University. It compares the responses of patients who are given placebo with those who receive treatment. Thus, British scientists suggested the effectiveness of dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, in treating covid, while they demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the multi-titrated drug hydroxychloroquine.
Last week, retrieval researchers began their tests to test the efficacy of RGN-COV2, when the first patients admitted to the hospital with covid complications were given the drug. REGN-COV2 is a combination of two synthetic antibodies, called monoclonal antibodies, and in the next few weeks, thousands more patients in the UK will be admitted to its effectiveness test.
Horby said Saturday he believes REGN-COV2 has real potential. “It’s one of the most promising drugs available,” he said. And Landre shared this optimism. “It simply came to our notice then. However, currently we all know that it reduces the viral load, the amount of virus in the patient. It tells us that this is a drug that is bad for the virus. But we do not yet know if it is really good for the patient. Can it have side effects? Is it better for children or the elderly, or for people on a ventilator? We need randomized trials to find out. “
The second drug test given to Trump, Remedizivir, has also produced encouraging results, although it is not conclusive again. A trial in China had to close earlier this year because it could not recruit enough patients, while later, U.S. In a larger trial it was shown that people who were given the drug spent less time on the ventilator and those who were given the drug had a slightly better survival rate. Than the placebo given it. However, the difference was not statistically significant.
“Remedesivir seems to speed up the recovery time of patients, but can more patients really survive? We don’t know, “Landre added. The answer to that question is now likely to be provided by the World Health Organization’s trial of Remediary, which will be completed in a few weeks.
The UK Recovery Program is now conducting randomized trials of several other potential covid treatments, including the antibiotic azithromycin and an anti-inflammatory drug known as tocilizumab – as well as blood plasma derived from covid patients’ recovery plasma. The results are expected in the coming months.
“If we can find some treatments to deal with the serious problems of Covid-1 of, we can make the disease more manageable, which is something like seasonal influenza, and it will make a big difference in our lives,” Landre added. “The only way we can get that is through careful, randomized trials.”
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