Cell Therapy News/Articles, page-2945

Unsurprising sallent parts from the NYT story overnight on Remdesivir following release of trial outcomes...

The long-awaited study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on The New England Journal of Medicine website on Friday evening. It confirms the essence of the government’s assertions: Remdesivir shortened recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalized patients.
The study defined recovery as “either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization.”The study’s designers changed the outcome measures after the study had began, but they did not have access to the current data.
Some critics questioned whether the change had altered the study’s conclusions, but a subsequent analysis determined that it did not.
The disease had a more protracted course than the investigators had realized, federal officials said, and the original endpoints — the measures of success — were unworkable.
The best outcome would have been a decline in the death rate among patients given remdesivir, but there were only hints that this had occurred.Despite generally positive results, the researchers caution that the drug is far from ideal.
“Given high mortality despite the use of remdesivir, it is clear that treatment with an antiviral drug alone is not likely to be sufficient,” they concluded.