Although several therapeutic agents have been evaluated for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), none have yet been shown to be efficacious.
We conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous remdesivir in adults hospitalized with Covid-19 with evidence of lower respiratory tract involvement. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either remdesivir (200 mg loading dose on day 1, followed by 100 mg daily for up to 9 additional days) or placebo for up to 10 days. The primary outcome was the time to recovery, defined by either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes only.
A total of 1063 patients underwent randomization. The data and safety monitoring board recommended early unblinding of the results on the basis of findings from an analysis that showed shortened time to recovery in the remdesivir group. Preliminary results from the 1059 patients (538 assigned to remdesivir and 521 to placebo) with data available after randomization indicated that those who received remdesivir had a median recovery time of 11 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 9 to 12), as compared with 15 days (95% CI, 13 to 19) in those who received placebo (rate ratio for recovery, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.12 to 1.55; P<0.001). The Kaplan-Meier estimates of mortality by 14 days were 7.1% with remdesivir and 11.9% with placebo (hazard ratio for death, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.47 to 1.04). Serious adverse events were reported for 114 of the 541 patients in the remdesivir group who underwent randomization (21.1%) and 141 of the 522 patients in the placebo group who underwent randomization (27.0%).
Remdesivir was superior to placebo in shortening the time to recovery in adults hospitalized with Covid-19 and evidence of lower respiratory tract infection. (Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and others; ACCT-1 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04280705.).
The New England journal of medicine. 2020 May 22 [Epub ahead of print]
John H Beigel, Kay M Tomashek, Lori E Dodd, Aneesh K Mehta, Barry S Zingman, Andre C Kalil, Elizabeth Hohmann, Helen Y Chu, Annie Luetkemeyer, Susan Kline, Diego Lopez de Castilla, Robert W Finberg, Kerry Dierberg, Victor Tapson, Lanny Hsieh, Thomas F Patterson, Roger Paredes, Daniel A Sweeney, William R Short, Giota Touloumi, David Chien Lye, Norio Ohmagari, Myoung-Don Oh, Guillermo M Ruiz-Palacios, Thomas Benfield, Gerd Fätkenheuer, Mark G Kortepeter, Robert L Atmar, C Buddy Creech, Jens Lundgren, Abdel G Babiker, Sarah Pett, James D Neaton, Timothy H Burgess, Tyler Bonnett, Michelle Green, Mat Makowski, Anu Osinusi, Seema Nayak, H Clifford Lane, ACTT-1 Study Group Members
From the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (J.H.B., K.M.T., L.E.D., S.N., H.C.L.), and the Infectious Disease Clinical Research Program, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (T.H.B.), Bethesda, the Clinical Monitoring Research Program Directorate, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, Frederick (T. Bonnett), and Emmes, Rockville (M.G., M.M.) - all in Maryland; Emory University, Atlanta (A.K.M.); Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein College of Medicine (B.S.Z.) and NYU Langone Health and NYC Health + Hospitals- Bellevue (K.D.), New York; University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha (A.C.K., M.G.K.); Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (E.H.), and University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester (R.W.F.); University of Washington, Seattle (H.Y.C.), and Evergreen Health Medical Center, Kirkland (D.L.C.) - both in Washington; University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco (A.L.), Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles (V.T.), University of California, Irvine, Irvine (L.H.), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla (D.A.S.), and Gilead Sciences, Foster City (A.O.) - all in California; University of Minnesota (S.K.) and University of Minnesota, School of Public Health and INSIGHT (J.D.N.), Minneapolis; University of Texas Health San Antonio, University Health System, and the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio (T.F.P.), and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston (R.L.A.); Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol & irsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute, Badalona, Spain (R.P.); University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (W.R.S.); Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens (G.T.); National Center for Infectious Diseases-Tan Tock Seng Hospital-Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine-Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore, Singapore (D.C.L.); the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Hospital, Tokyo (N.O.); Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea (M.O.); Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Mexico City (G.M.R.-P.); the Department of Infectious Diseases, Amager Hvidovre Hospital-University of Copenhagen, Hvidovre (T. Benfield), and Rigshospitalet, Department of Infectious Diseases (CHIP) and INSIGHT, Copenhagen (J.L.) - both in Denmark; University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany (G.F.); Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville (C.B.C.); and University College London, MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL and INSIGHT, London (A.G.B., S.P.).