Dan O'Day, Gilead CEO (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Eu­ro­pean study finds that Gilead­'s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral remde­sivir shows no clin­i­cal ben­e­fit

Gilead’s remde­sivir — or Vek­lury, as it’s mar­ket­ed in the US — raked in around $2.8 bil­lion last year as the on­ly FDA-ap­proved an­tivi­ral to treat Covid-19. But new da­ta from a Eu­ro­pean study sug­gest the drug, which has been giv­en to about half of hos­pi­tal­ized Covid pa­tients in the coun­try, has no ac­tu­al ben­e­fit.

The open-la­bel Dis­CoV­eRy tri­al en­rolled Covid-19 pa­tients across 48 sites in Eu­rope to test a hand­ful of treat­ments, in­clud­ing remde­sivir, lopinavir–ri­ton­avir, lopinavir–ri­ton­avir and in­ter­fer­on be­ta-1a, and hy­drox­y­chloro­quine. To par­tic­i­pate, pa­tients had to show symp­toms for sev­en days and re­quire oxy­gen sup­port. A to­tal of 429 pa­tients were ran­dom­ized to re­ceive remde­sivir plus stan­dard of care, while 428 were as­signed to stan­dard of care alone.

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