Washington. Researchers report first successes in animal experiments with the remdesivir agent in the fight against coronavirus.
In a small-scale experiment on monkeys, the first treatment successes with remdesivir against coronavirus-induced lung disease Covid-19 were shown. As scientists commissioned by the US government announced on Friday, the health of the monkeys treated with the virus-inhibiting agent improved significantly after just 12 hours. The preliminary study results have not yet been independently assessed.
This is how the experiments went
For the experiment, the scientists deliberately infected two groups of six rhesus monkeys with the pathogen Sars-Cov-2. One of the two groups was given Remdesivir, an agent developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, twelve hours after the infection, but not the control group. The researchers administered the drug to the treatment group monkeys shortly before the virus concentration in the lungs peaked. According to the scientists, the health status of the treated monkeys improved significantly twelve hours after receiving the first dose of remdesivir. According to the study report, this trend continued over the entire one-week study period.
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According to the researchers, one of the animals in the treatment group had slight breathing difficulties despite the remdesivir therapy. In the control group, however, the health status of all six monkeys deteriorated rapidly. All of them had severe breathing difficulties. The researchers found a significantly lower virus concentration in the lungs of the monkeys treated with Remdesivir than in the untreated monkeys. Lung damage was also less in the animals in the treatment group.
Already administered to people
Remdesivir is one of the most promising agents in the fight against the novel coronavirus and is already used in individual cases to treat patients. Random clinical trials with remdesivir are already underway in several countries. As the health website Stat reported on Thursday, the drug had a great impact on corona patients in a Chicago hospital participating in the clinical trials.
Remdesivir has also been used to treat Ebola. At the beginning of April, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) approved a so-called hardship program, in which severely affected corona patients may be treated with remdesivir outside of a clinical trial in hospital, although there is still no official approval.
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