Remdesivir in the treatment of SARS-CoV-2
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In early 2020 the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 was declared a pandemic. With this came the search for ways to treat infected patients. A drug that was found was remdesivir, which is a nucleotide analog RNA polymerase inhibitor that was originally used for the treatment of Ebola. With FDA emergency approval on May 1st, 2020, remdesivir was used to treat hospitalized COVID19 patients, but at that time the question of its effectiveness was still to be answered, and studies were conducted around the world. On November 20th, 2020, however, WHO issued a recommendation against the use of remdesivir in the treatment of COVID19, causing some controversy. This paper’s objective is to review the results of the studies conducted, and to draw conclusions of remdesivir’s effectiveness in treating COVID19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
METHODS: Databases were search with terms such as COVID19 and remdesivir between May 2021 and January 2022, looking for published papers that match the requirements to be included in this study, which were randomized controlled trials of remdesivir in the treatment of hospitalized COVID19 patients compared to a control or placebo, looking at mortality rates and time to recovery. From there the data was reviewed and analyzed to draw conclusions.
RESULTS: Baseline characteristics of control patients and patients treated with remdesivir were similar, with similar baseline severity of illness at the time of randomization into their trial. The results showed no difference in the chances of death between the groups but showed a decrease in length of hospital stay for patients treated with remdesivir as compared to the control and placebo groups. There was no difference in the chance of adverse effects across both groups.
CONCLUSION: Through this review it was found remdesivir has no effect on the mortality rate. It does aid in the time to recovery in patients diagnosed with COVID19. The lack of effect on the mortality aligns with WHO’s recommendation against the use of remdesivir in the treatment of COVID19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus, but remdesivir’s ability to decrease time to recovery contradicts it.