Coronavirus case in the US treated with experimental Gilead drug may spur wider tests
- The patient’s pneumonia appeared to improve within a day, with no obvious side effects, after the intravenous drug was administered
The first reported use of an experimental Gilead Sciences drug to fight the novel coronavirus has encouraged doctors to support further testing of the medication.
Gilead’s remdesivir was given to the first US case, a 35-year-old man who developed pneumonia after he tested positive for the 2019-nCoV virus and was hospitalised in an airborne-isolation unit at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett in Washington state for observation.
“To my knowledge, this is the first reported case in the world where this drug has been used in a human application against this virus,” Jay Cook, chief medical officer at the center, told reporters on a conference call Friday. “At the time, we felt the benefits of using this drug outweighed whatever potential risk there might be and we obtained his informed consent.”
The patient’s pneumonia appeared to improve within a day, with no obvious side effects, after the intravenous drug was administered, his doctors reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Friday. The finding should encourage randomised, controlled clinical trials to determine its safety and efficacy for treating 2019-nCoV infections, they said.
The drug was approved for use on compassionate grounds. It’s not licensed or approved anywhere in the world, and hasn’t been demonstrated to be safe or effective for any use, Foster City, California-based Gilead said in a statement.
The drug maker, known for its antivirals to fight hepatitis C and HIV, is working with global health authorities to respond to the coronavirus outbreak through the “appropriate experimental use” of remdesivir, Gilead said. It’s also cooperating with individual researchers and clinicians to lend its knowledge and antiviral expertise to help patients fight 2019-nCoV.