Leaked data from Gilead’s clinical trial indicates antiviral drug remdesivir failed to help coronavirus patients

A long-awaited clinical trial has shown that the antiviral medicine remdesivir from Gilead Sciences failed to help coronavirus patients with their condition or prevent them from dying. A summary of the study was apparently mistakenly posted to the WHO's website but later removed, Stat News reports.

“A draft document was provided by the authors to WHO and inadvertently posted on the website and taken down as soon as the mistake was noticed. The manuscript is undergoing peer review and we are waiting for a final version before WHO comments,” said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.

According to Gilead spokesperson Amy Flood, the company believes “the post included inappropriate characterization of the study" since it cannot “enable statistically meaningful conclusions” since it was stopped too early. She added that “trends in the data suggest a potential benefit for remdesivir, particularly among patients treated early in disease.”

"Many studies are being run to test remdesivir, and this one will not be the final word," Stat reports. "Results are expected soon from a Gilead-run study in severe Covid-19 patients, although that study may be difficult to interpret because the drug is not compared to patients receiving only standard treatment. Encouraging data from patients in that study at the University of Chicago were described by researchers at a virtual town hall and obtained by STAT last week. However, unlike those data, these new results are from a randomized controlled trial, the medical gold standard."

Read the full report over at Stat News.