Covid-19 Treatment Successes in Monkeys

As scientists commissioned by the United States government announced on Friday, the health of monkeys treated with the virus-inhibiting agent improved significantly after just 12 hours. The preliminary results of the study have not yet been independently evaluated.

For the experiment, the scientists deliberately infected two groups of six rhesus monkeys with the pathogen Sars-Cov-2. One of the two groups received Remdesivir, an agent developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, twelve hours after infection, but not the control group.

The researchers administered the drug to the monkeys in the treatment group shortly before the concentration of virus in the lungs peaked. According to the scientists, the health status of the treated monkeys improved significantly twelve hours after receiving the first dose of remdesivir. According to the study report, this trend continued throughout the one-week study period.

According to the researchers, one of the animals in the treatment group had mild respiratory difficulties despite remdesivir therapy. In the control group, however, the health status of the six monkeys rapidly deteriorated. They all had severe respiratory difficulties.

The researchers found a significantly lower virus concentration in the lungs of the monkeys treated with Remdesivir than in the untreated monkeys. Lung damage was also less in animals in the treatment group.

Remdesivir is one of the most promising agents in the fight against the new coronavirus and is already used in individual cases to treat patients. Randomized clinical trials with remdesivir are already underway in several countries. As the health website Stat reported Thursday, the drug had a big effect on crown patients at a Chicago hospital participating in clinical trials.

Remdesivir has also been used to treat Ebola. In early April, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) approved a so-called hardship program, in which severely affected crown patients can be treated with remdesivir outside of a clinical trial in the hospital, although there is still no official approval.