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The World Health Organization has updated its current guidelines on Covid-19 drugs to advise against the use of the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat hospital patients, regardless of the severity of their illness.
According to the update, published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ, current evidence does not suggest that remdesivir affects the risk of dying from Covid-19 or needing mechanical ventilation, among other important findings.
The new WHO update comes about a month after Gilead Sciences, the makers of remdesivir, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved remdesivir for the treatment of coronavirus infection. The drug became the first treatment for the coronavirus to receive FDA approval.
Remdesivir may have received FDA approval but not the WHO recommendation due to emerging research – which initially showed some benefit against Covid-19, but as more data is gathered ‘accumulate, that seems to be changing, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, principal investigator at Johns Hopkins. Center for Health Security, which did not participate in the WHO guidelines.
“We’ve seen people realize that the benefit of remdesivir is marginal at best – and maybe the only benefit we were touting was that it improves people faster. this is what we see reflected in the WHO guidelines, just more evaluation of the data that exists and not anymore, ”Adalja told CNN Thursday.
“The fact that it was an antiviral that showed benefits in some trials – but not in all trials – was enough to make people want to use it because we didn’t have any tools, but I think it did. will likely be superseded shortly, “Adalja said, adding that the indication for drugs may change over time.
A little background: WHO has brought together an international group of 24 experts and four Covid-19 survivors to review the data and make recommendations. The recommendation against remdesivir was based on data from four randomized trials including 7,333 people hospitalized with Covid-19.
“The panel concluded that most patients would not prefer intravenous treatment with remdesivir given the low-certainty evidence,” wrote researchers from various institutions around the world in the updated WHO guideline .
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