A biotech company has claimed that an experimental drug that it had manufactured in the wake of the Ebola virus out break has proved to be effective in treating patients with the novel coronavirus infection according to a major study by the United States government that subjected the treatment using the drug to a stiff and strict test.
The drug, Remdesivir, developed by the bio tech company Gilead Sciences, is the first drug and treatment mechanism that has reportedly passed such a test as a treatment against the novel coronavirus that caused the disease called Covid-19. More than 218,000 people have so far been killed by the disease all across the world since it first emerged from Human city in China at the end of last year.
There can be profound effect on the global pandemic if it was possible to find a curable treatment against the disease, particularly because of a potential vaccine being predicted by health experts to be at least a year or a year and a half away at the earliest.
The study for the effectiveness of the drug remdesivir against the novel coronavirus was conducted by the National Institutes of Health of the United States. The study pit the drug against the usual care for a Covid-19 patient among about 800 patients who were hospitalized with the disease all around the world. The main positive outcome from the use of the drug is the time taken by patients to recover in a hospital setting.
No details of the results from the study were however provided by Gilead apart from saying that a formal announcement of the study results is expected soon. There were also no formal comments available about the study and its outcome from NIH officials.
Patients are administered remdesivir through intra venous mechanism and it is designed to interfere with an enzyme that reproduces viral genetic material. The drug was found to have helped prevent infection and reduced the severity of symptoms when given early enough in the course of illness in experiments and studies that were conducted for the drug against SARS and MERS, diseases caused by similar coronaviruses, in animals.
(Source:www.indiatoday.in)
The drug, Remdesivir, developed by the bio tech company Gilead Sciences, is the first drug and treatment mechanism that has reportedly passed such a test as a treatment against the novel coronavirus that caused the disease called Covid-19. More than 218,000 people have so far been killed by the disease all across the world since it first emerged from Human city in China at the end of last year.
There can be profound effect on the global pandemic if it was possible to find a curable treatment against the disease, particularly because of a potential vaccine being predicted by health experts to be at least a year or a year and a half away at the earliest.
The study for the effectiveness of the drug remdesivir against the novel coronavirus was conducted by the National Institutes of Health of the United States. The study pit the drug against the usual care for a Covid-19 patient among about 800 patients who were hospitalized with the disease all around the world. The main positive outcome from the use of the drug is the time taken by patients to recover in a hospital setting.
No details of the results from the study were however provided by Gilead apart from saying that a formal announcement of the study results is expected soon. There were also no formal comments available about the study and its outcome from NIH officials.
Patients are administered remdesivir through intra venous mechanism and it is designed to interfere with an enzyme that reproduces viral genetic material. The drug was found to have helped prevent infection and reduced the severity of symptoms when given early enough in the course of illness in experiments and studies that were conducted for the drug against SARS and MERS, diseases caused by similar coronaviruses, in animals.
(Source:www.indiatoday.in)
