The Efficacy of Remdesivir Drug to Control the Recently Emerged Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A Review Study

Introduction: Remdesivir is among the investigational drugs which show some promising effect against COVID-19, it may be due to its broad-spectrum antiviral action against some RNA viruses. To date very few clinical studies have been conducted on the use of remdesivir to the treatment of COVID-19. The main objective of the present study was, to conduct a review on the effect of Remdesivir to the treatment of COVID-19. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review on the effect of remdesivir drug to the treatment of COVID-19.

Methodology: We have searched PubMed, for published studies on assessing the effect of remdesivir drug among patients with confirmed COVID-19. The main search terms used were “COVID-19” or “SARS-CoV-2”, “remdesivir”, and “systematic review”.

Results: Only 11 research articles were found eligible for enclosure in this systematic review, among selected studies only two were randomized, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous remdesivir. Data on the efficacy of remdesivir in the patients with confirmed COVID-19 from clinical Phase-III trials are still pending. Recently, in the latter half of May month, results of two hospital based randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III trials studies were reported, both the studies found that remdesivir was efficient in the treatment of patients with confirmed COVID-19. However, Wang et al., (2020) found that remdesivir treatment was not significantly associated with clinical benefits.

Conclusion: From the systematic review, the use of remdesivir to cure patients with confirms COVID-19 was found promising; however, further clinical studies with large patient size need to be considered. The efficacy and safety of remdesivir in the treatment of COVID-19 will require to be emphasized in future research studies.