NEW DELHI: Gilead Sciences Inc’s recently announced one of the world’s first experimental coronavirus drug. However, according to draft documents published accidentally by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the drug has failed its first randomized clinical trial. The Chinese trial showed that the antiviral Remdesivir did not improve patients’ condition or reduce the pathogen content in their bloodstream.
The report said that researchers studied 237 patients, giving the drug to 158 and comparing their progress with the remaining 79. Moreover, due to visible side effects, a total of 18 patients had to be taken off the drug. Interest in Gilead’s antiviral drug has been at an all-time high as doctors and governments around the world are desperately trying to find a way to shut off the advance of the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.
The company is regularly testing the drug in multiple batches and is currently awaiting the result of a test carried out on 400 patients, hospitalized with severe illness, later this month. Remdesivir had previously failed clinical trials for curing Ebola. However, due to the drugs ability to disable the mechanism by which certain viruses make copies of themselves and attack the immune system of the host, it is being retested as a cure for the novel coronavirus too.