Junk Science? Number 118: Remdisivir fails to impress in WHO research

In a large scale study by the World Health Organisation, Remdisivir was found to make no difference to death rates in people taking the drug for Covid.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) have produced a major study – the Solidarity Study – on Remdisivir and other supposed anti-Covid drugs, and it’s prompted heavy criticism from Gilead. In the WHO study, of 2743 hospitalised patients, 11% of the Remdisivir group died compared to almost the same figure 11.2% of the control group.

The WHO did say that the drug had met global standards of quality, safety and efficacy.

The authors of the study then went a step further and pooled the Solidarity data with the results of 3 other trials – again finding no significant differences between Remdisivir groups and non-users. The authors wrote “.This absolutely excludes the suggestion that remdesivir can prevent a substantial fraction of all deaths. The confidence interval is comfortably compatible with prevention of a small fraction of all deaths but is also comfortably compatible with prevention of no deaths”

“This trial doesn’t help remdesivir, that’s for sure,” says Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. Other commentators agreed; one, from the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai commented that the 4 drugs tested can now all be ruled out. He felt anyway that the understanding of the disease had moved on more to managing inflammation and clotting. This may be why steroids and aspirin have yielded positive recent results.

Go to: Aspirin and Covid

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Reference

1. Science Mag – https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/remdesivir-and-interferon-fall-flat-who-s-megastudy-covid-19-treatments