Experimental virus drug remdesivir effective in monkeys: study
19 April, 2020
The experimental antiviral drug remdesivir has verified effective against COVID-19 in a small experiment involving monkeys, US government scientists reported Friday.
The analysis, which is preliminary and hasn't yet been peer reviewed, was made to follow dosing and treatment procedures used for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a sizable human trial.
It involved two groups of six rhesus macaques that were deliberately infected with SARS-CoV-2.
One group received the drug, that was produced by Gilead Sciences, and the other group did not.
The group obtaining the drug got their first intravenous dose 12 hours after infection then each day subsequently for six days.
The scientists timed the initial treatment to occur shortly before the virus reached its highest levels in the animals' lungs.
The treated animals showed significant improvement 12 hours after their first dose, a trend that continued over the week-long study.
Among the six treated animals showed mild breathing difficulty, while all six of the untreated monkeys had rapid and difficult breathing.
The amount of virus within the lungs was drastically lower in the treated group compared to the untreated group.
The treated group also had less lung damage.
Remdesivir was one of the primary drugs mooted as a treatment for the novel coronavirus and its own randomized clinical trials are in an advanced stage.
Medical news website Stat on Thursday reported the drug had shown great efficacy at a Chicago hospital where patients who are part of these trials are being treated.
Remdesivir causes the virus to include mutations that may destroy it.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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