Corona drug Remdesivir works in severe cases – but not in critical cases

According to a new Swiss study, the corona drug Remdesivir reduces mortality by about two percent. However, only in patients without or only with conventional oxygen therapy. The results have been published in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

In the case of the patients most affected by the coronavirus — those who require so-called high-flow oxygen therapy — the evidence is inconclusive, as the scientists from the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel wrote in the study published Tuesday. . This may be due to the fact that little data was available on this group of those affected.

However, the researchers were unable to identify any negative effects of the drug in patients with a critical Covid 19 infection. “Fortunately, we have seen that remdesivir does not lead to more serious unwanted side effects compared to usual treatment,” study lead author Benjamin Speich said in a statement from the University of Basel on Wednesday.

Remdesivir, originally developed against the Ebola virus, was one of the first drugs approved in Switzerland for the treatment of Covid-19 in 2020. Since then, several international studies have examined how treatment with remdesivir reduced the mortality of hospitalized adults with Covid-19. -19 affects. The results were contradictory, so it remained controversial how well the drug works and whether its benefit differs in individual patient groups.

The researchers have now collected and reanalyzed individual patient data from eight clinical trials. This is data from more than 10,000 unvaccinated patients from more than 40 countries who had been hospitalized for Covid-19. The results are in line with current WHO guidelines recommending the use of remdesivir for patients with severe but non-critical Covid-19 infection.

With regard to age, the presence of concomitant diseases or subgroups with different levels of inflammatory markers, there was no evidence of any other benefit of the active substance to the patients. In addition, treatment with remdesivir did not lead to earlier hospital discharge. The effect of remdesivir in vaccinated or recovered people should be elucidated in further studies, the study said. (aeg/sda)