IS COVID-19 GONNA CURE???

Chinese researchers recently found that the anti-coronavirus drug Remdesivir deteriorates the sperm quality of mice during the experiment. A published study showed that among 53 patients treated with Remdesivir, 68% had improved symptoms while 23% showed severe side effects. Remdesivir is an antiviral medication developed by the American biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. It is a nucleotide analog, specifically an adenosine analogue, which inserts into viral RNA chains, causing their premature termination.

            Positive feedback from a clinical trial being conducted at the University of Chicago, leaked last week, buoyed the entire stock market as investors looked for any sign that the availability of a successful drug could help open up locked down economies. “In this study of hospitalized adult patients with severe Covid-19 that was terminated prematurely, remdesivir was not associated with clinical or virological benefits,” the filing said. The WHO collates current trials for possible Covid-19 interventions on a website titled “landscape analysis of candidate therapeutics for Covid-19.” A previous version of the website, which contained five pages and a column called “outcomes,” is no longer available. The new one only contains four pages and no “outcome” column. The study was terminated early because of a lack of patients. It was conducted in China, which after a surge in cases earlier this year has seen a taper in the number of those affected. Earlier this month, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed early positive results for remdesivir, with 68 per cent of patients improving on the drug. However, the study was not an official trial but rather the collation of data from patients who had been given the drug on a “compassionate use” basis — and was not compared to any control arm. The scientists behind the study and Gilead warned at the time that it was not conclusive. There had been other positive signs too. Early impressions from a study showed rapid recoveries in almost all of the more than a hundred severely ill patients, when they were leaked to healthcare industry publication Stat news. A recent US National Institutes of Health animal study also found the drug was effective at treating the disease in monkeys, when taken early in its progression. Much larger randomized controlled trials are under way, comparing remdesivir with controls, which in Covid-19 usually means standard care for a respiratory illness, and to other drugs including the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine. Gilead originally developed remdesivir as a treatment for Ebola, where it showed promise at stopping the virus from replicating in clinical trials, but it has never been approved.

A potential antiviral drug to treat coronavirus has flopped in its first randomized clinical trial, disappointing scientists and investors who had high hopes for remdesivir, according to draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization and seen by the Financial Times. The Chinese trial showed remdesivir — developed by California-based Gilead Sciences — did not improve patients’ condition or reduce the pathogen’s presence in the bloodstream. Researchers studied 237 patients, giving the drug to 158 and comparing their progress with the remaining 79. The drug also showed significant side effects in some, which meant 18 patients, were taken off it.

A total of 508 volunteers, in the 2nd-phase trial of the adenovirus vector vaccine, have received injections and are now under observation. If things proceed as planned, the vaccine will be unblended in May this year, a Chinese military infectious disease expert said on Sun.


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