Trump Received Drug Has Little Effect Against Covid-19 – NRK Viten – Science and Research News

Remdesivir is one of the drugs that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has received. There has been high hope that it will become a cornerstone of the medical response to the coronary pandemic.

Now the researchers of the great international survey Solidarity have reached their conclusion. Remdesivir does not guarantee that more people will survive severe COVID-19.

It also doesn’t seem to affect how long patients stay in the hospital.

The study is published on the scientific “prepress server” Medrxiv.

The Solidarity survey is coordinated by the World Health Organization and is the largest of its kind in the world.

Thoroughly tested and verified

In hospitals in many countries, including Norway, 2,750 patients were treated with Remdesivir. This group was compared to an equally large group that did not. It is these controlled experiments that provide knowledge.

The results of the study show that there is no significant difference in survival between the different groups.

When patients are divided into subgroups, the study suggests that the sickest have a higher risk of dying if treated with Remdesivir. However, the difference is so small that it may be a coincidence.

The study also suggests that less affected patients are more likely to survive on Remdesivir, but this may also be a coincidence.

Drill holes in previous research

In June, there were results that indicated that Remdesivir had some effect. A revised edition of this research was published on October 8. The conclusion was the same.

The researchers found that 11.4 percent of the patients who received Remdesivir had died within a month, compared with 15.2 percent of the patients who were in the control group. This suggests that if the trial was repeated or carried out with several patients, this small difference could be erased.

With the new and extensive study that has arrived, that is exactly what has happened.

Gilead Sciences, which makes Remdesivir, has commented to the Financial Times. They say they are aware of the study results, but they say that other, and better studies, have shown otherwise.

Good thought

Remdesivir is intended to ensure that human cells infected with coronavirus do not produce more virus. This is how the infection spreads through the body. The small number of viruses that infect you find new homes in your cells. There, they take over the machinery and produce more viruses. In a short time you have billions of viruses and you are sick.

Remdesivir should short-circuit this process by sabotaging the copy. In experiments with human cells in the laboratory, it does just that. In human trials, it also appears that the amount of virus is decreasing.

However, it does not make more people survive if they become seriously ill.

I had a lot of hope

“There is only one drug that we think can have a real effect, and that is Remdesivir,” said Bruce Aylward, deputy director of the World Health Organization as early as March.

At the time, early trials, though weak, suggested that COVID-19 patients got out of the hospital faster if they received Remdesivir. The result was so encouraging that the drug was the first to be included in the Solidaridad survey for reliable insights.

We have acquired that knowledge now, and it does not say what many expected.

In addition to Remdesivir, the researchers in the new study looked at the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and a combination of the HIV drugs Lopinavir / Ritonavir.