COVID-19 Treatments

This week the NIH halted its ORCHID Trial which was studying hydroxychloroquine in severe and moderate COVID-19. Following the termination of hydroxychloroquine in the WHO solidarity trial, the scientific community is moving forward  with new therapies. Gilead has begun its trials on nebulized Remdesivir delivery in healthy individuals. This antiviral therapy is currently administered by…

The RECOVERY trial out of the United Kingdom announced their preliminary results on hydroxychloroquine efficacy for COVID-19. Using the primary endpoint of mortality at day 28 post symptoms onset, they enrolled a total of 1542 patients randomised to hydroxychloroquine and 3132 patients randomised to standard care. Overall, they found there was no significant difference between…

This week, Hydroxychloroquine was brought to the forefront of the drug arena for COVID once again after retraction of a study that reported detrimental effects of the drug (Mehra et al., The Lancet 2020). This study from the Lancet has been called into question after a lack of transparency with data, with the authors (who…

In exciting news, the official report of the ACTT trial for Remdesivir was published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week (Beigel JH, et al.). In the study, we saw an expansion of the previously released preliminary results with stronger significance for the efficacy of Remdesivir on reducing time to recovery in a…

Following the preliminary results from COVID-19 trials in the previous weeks, ongoing trials are continuing to be revamped and redesigned. So while we wait for additional news, this week’s blog post is going to focus on the debate of corticosteroids as a COVID-19 treatment. Corticosteroids are used for a variety of conditions such as asthma,…

Several surprising announcements were made this past week pertaining to COVID-19 clinical trials. The first was the ending of the first phase of the NIAID ACTT trial of remdesivir. Although remdesivir did reduce recovery time from COVID-19 it did not demonstrate a significantly better mortality rate; thus, NIAID has begun the next phase of ACTT,…

This past week, new studies have shed light onto the risks/benefits and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir. For hydroxychloroquine, the preliminary data from New York’s recent clinical trial was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday (Geleris J, et al. 2020). This study was the largest to date (n=1,376), and tested both…

This week, there have been exciting updates about two Remdesivir trials with promising results. The first was NIAID’s ACT trial (n=800) which demonstrated a reduction in the time to recovery from 15 days to 11 days in the Remdesivir treated group compared to a control placebo (p < 0.001, NIAID ACTT). In addition, the trial…

This week, there has been news for both remdesivir and chloroquine/ hydroxychloroquine. Following the announcement of preliminary results from the Gilead Science trials at the University of Chicago, there has been thought to be a promising potential in remdesivir with the trial now rapidly expanding.  There has also been further speculation on preemptively released results…