University of Chicago Medicine researchers said they saw “rapid recoveries” in 125 COVID-19 patients taking Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental drug remdesivir as part of a clinical trial, according to a Thursday afternoon report.
The patients taking part in a clinical trial of the drug have all had severe respiratory symptoms and fever, but were able to leave the hospital after less than a week of treatment, STAT quoted the doctor leading the trial as saying.
“The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish,” Dr. Kathleen Mullane, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago who is leading the clinical trial, said in the video.
There are no proven treatments or vaccines for the novel coronavirus which has sickened more than two million people world-wide and killed nearly 150,000 people, but remdesivir is considered a front-runner in the race to develop a treatment for COVID-19 infections that works. Though the findings reported by Stat are promising, they are not based on full clinical trial data from the company.
According to Stat, 125 people with COVID-19 receiving care at the University of Chicago are participating in two Phase 3 clinical trials conducted by Gilead; 113 of them have severe forms of the disease. Stat said it obtained a recorded video discussion about the trial among University of Chicago faculty members in which a physician said when some people start taking the drug, fevers come down and some come off ventilators.
One trial is evaluating remdesivir in 2,400 people with severe forms of the disease, the other is testing the drug in 1,600 patients who are moderately ill. Both trials are being conducted at multiple sites around the world. According to ClinicalTrials.gov, both trials began in March and are expected to conclude in May.
In a statement to Stat News on Thursday, Gilead said: “What we can say at this stage is that we look forward to data from ongoing studies becoming available.”
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