Chinese trials for Gilead’s antiviral drug to treat coronavirus still far from reaching patient recruitment goals

South China via Yahoo News ^ | 02/23/2020 | Coco Feng

[SeekAndFind]

Clinical trials of an experimental antiviral drug said to “show promise” in treating the deadly coronavirus are still far from fulfilling patient recruitment targets more than two weeks in, raising questions about whether they can be completed within previously projected timelines.

Double-blind trials of Gilead Sciences’ drug, remdesivir, are now taking place in 10 hospitals in Wuhan, vice-minister of science and technology Xu Nanping said at a press conference on Friday.

Currently, the trials involve more than 200 severe patients and over 30 mild or moderate cases, according to Xu. This is up from the 168 severe and 17 mild or moderate cases reported by Xu's colleague Zhang Xinmin at a separate press conference on Saturday, but still less than a third of the targeted total of 760 patients, according to documents for the study listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, an international clinical trial registry run by the United States National Library of Medicine.

The researchers had aimed to recruit 308 mild and moderate patients with the novel coronavirus and 452 severe cases, with both trials involving hospitalised patients with Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, taking a nine-day dose of the drug to test its efficacy and safety.

Patients who have received any other experimental treatments within 30 days of the time they are screened are excluded from the remdesivir trials, according to the documents on ClinicalTrials.gov, possibly limiting the pool of qualified candidates, especially as authorities ramp up containment measures.

Gilead’s chief medical officer Merdad Parsey told state-run press agency Xinhua on Monday that the company was expecting the results of clinical trials for remdesivir in April.

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OMG! There is a shortage of potential patients in CHINA???

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[Pollard]

I thought they had people locked up in quarantine facilities and apartment buildings.

[ncfool]

Now I know why this stock is up 12% since January 27th and 5% today.

[sauropod]

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