By Kemo Cham
An experimental drug, Remdesivir, is reported to have shown effectiveness against Covid-19, raising hopes of a cure for the viral pandemic.
The antiviral drug, which was developed by Gilead Sciences, is one of nearly 200 experimental drugs on trial. It is under study in a small experiment by US government scientists.
The trial involves monkeys.
The scientists reported last Friday it causes the virus to add mutations that can destroy it.
"Early treatment with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir significantly reduced clinical disease and damage to the lungs of rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19," said a press release from the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US, which is running the study.
The study, according to NIH, is preliminary and has not yet been peer reviewed. It said that the scientists administer it on the monkeys using dosing and treatment procedures used for hospitalized Covid-19 patients in a large human trial.
Two groups of six rhesus macaques species of monkeys were deliberately infected with SARS-CoV-2¸ the virus strain that causes coronavirus. One group received remdesivir, while the other group did not. The group which received the drug got their first intravenous dose 12 hours after infection and then every day afterwards, for six days.
The scientists timed the initial treatment to occur shortly before the virus reached its highest levels in the animals' lungs.
According to the findings, the treated animals showed significant improvement 12 hours after their first dose. And this, the authors said, continued over the course of the one week the study lasted for.
One of the six treated monkeys showed mild breathing difficulty, while all six of the untreated monkeys had rapid and difficult breathing.
A smaller amount of the virus was found in the lungs of the treated group of the animals, compared to the untreated ones.
The treated group also experienced less lung damage.
Remdesivir is part of WHO’s “solidarity” trial which is an international collaborative research involving four drugs with potential for treating Covid-19.
Remdesivir was previously tested as an Ebola treatment. It has generated promising results in animal studies for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which are also caused by coronaviruses, suggesting it may have some effect in patients with COVID-19.
Also part of the “solidarity” trial is the Chloroquine, the drug previously used to treat malaria.
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