BREAKING! Remdesivir And COVID-19: More Medical Experts Doubting Effectiveness Of Remdesivir And Voicing Their Concerns In New BMJ Report
Source: Remdesivir And COVID-19 Jul 31, 2020 3 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 17 hours, 51 minutes ago
Remdesivir And COVID-19: Remdesivir that drug that has no proven antiviral properties nor proper credible studies to show how it really works except that it shortens hospitalization stays and was granted approval to treat COVID-19 by the US FDA under the Trump Administration is now coming under the spotlight again and we expect that this will not be the only concerns raised as feedback is coming in that most medical professional are questioning its efficacy and its claims to shorten hospitalization stays.
The drug which has no proper safety studies done was approved by the Trump administration which had earlier approved the lethal drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. The Trump administration had also bought more than half a million doses at inflated prices of more than US$ 3,000 per dose while the current cost per dose in India is now even down to only about US$28 per dose! No one is sure which of Trumps cronies or relatives made profits but for sure Americans will have to pay those inflated rates when they contract COVID-19.
A panel of international experts make a weak recommendation in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for the use of remdesivir in patients with severe covid-19, and strongly support continued enrolment of patients into ongoing clinical trials of remdesivir in order to see real actual data on its effectiveness.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2980
The medical experts advice is part of
The BMJ's Rapid Recommendations initiative to produce rapid and trustworthy guidelines for clinical practice based on new evidence to help doctors make better decisions with their patients.
The supposedly ‘antiviral medication’ remdesivir has received worldwide attention as a potentially effective treatment for severe covid-19 and is already being used in clinical practice.
The new recommendation is based on a new evidence review comparing the effects of several drug treatments for covid-19 up to 20 July 2020.
That weak evidence shows that remdesivir could be effective in reducing recovery time in patients with severe covid-19, although the certainty of the evidence is low. But remdesivir probably has no important effect on the need for mechanical ventilation and may have little or no effect on length of hospital stay.
The medical experts stress that "the effectiveness of most interventions is uncertain because most of the randomized controlled trials so far have been small and have important study limitations."
The research team said that after thoroughly reviewing this weak evidence, the expert panel says that most patients with severe covid-19 would likely choose treatment with remdesivir given the potential reduction in time to clinical improvement.
However given the low certainty evidence, and allowing for different patient perspectives, values, and preferences, they issued a weak recommendation with strong support for continued recruitment in trials.
The medical experts suggest that future research should focus on areas such as optimal dose and duration of therapy, and whether there are
specific groups of patients most likely to benefit from remdesivir.
The researchers also sound a note of caution about the potential opportunity cost of using remdesivir while the evidence base is still uncertain. As a relatively costly drug that is given intravenously, use of remdesivir may divert funds, time, attention, and workforce away from other potentially worthwhile treatments.
The research study that today's recommendation is based on is called a living systematic review.
The BMJ editors explain that living systematic reviews are useful in fast moving research areas such as covid-19 because they allow authors to update previously vetted and peer reviewed evidence summaries as new information becomes available.
To date, this is the second living systematic review published by
The BMJ this year, and it will be updated to reflect emerging evidence. Several more are planned, including one on pregnancy outcomes among women infected with covid-19.
For more on
Remdesivir and COVID-19, keep on logging to Thailand Medical News.
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