Remdesivir Shows Promise in Largest of Several Clinical Trials

Gilead’s experimental antiviral drug shortened the average time it took COVID-19 patients to recover in a NIAID-sponsored trial. There was weak evidence that it also helped reduce deaths.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences as a treatment for Ebola, has shown clinical benefit in a US clinical trial with 1,063 COVID-19 patients. While hospitalized COVID-19 patients receiving a placebo took an average of 15 days to recover from the disease, patients taking remdesivir recovered in an average of 11 days—a reduction of 31 percent.

“Remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery,” reads a statement posted yesterday (April 29) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). “More detailed information about the trial results, including more comprehensive data, will be available in a forthcoming report.”

The study did not conclusively demonstrate that the drug reduces mortality from COVID-19, although the NIAID statement noted that statistically insignificant results from the trial were suggestive of a survival benefit: the group receiving the drug had ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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