Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, says WHO

Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by tptacek on Friday October 16, 2020 @01:57PM (#24803290)

To continue an RCT once it reveals strong evidence for benefit in the treatment group, you have to deliberately inflict suffering on the control group. You can't do that ethically.

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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by gregwebs on Friday October 16, 2020 @02:30PM (#24803611)

Strong evidence for a benefit is often measured by death or something extremely severe.

When using other clinical endpoints cherry-picking is to be avoided. [1]

> For a trial to stop early for benefit, the observed effect on the composite end point ideally should be consistent in the individual components.

[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circheartfailur...

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Re:Covid: Remdesivir 'has little or no effect' on survival, ... by beagle3 on Saturday October 17, 2020 @09:08AM (#24809683)

That's true, but that's not the case here.

It showed no evidence for the strong benefit they were looking for (mortality), but a similar trial started in China before that trial, ended - and showed no change in mortality, but some shortening of the hospital stay (even though that wasn't its stated hypothesis). At that point, the western RCT remdesivir trial added the "hospital stay" target, and lo-and-behold, shortly afterwards, it turned out that it does result in no less mortality but shorter hospital stay as well.

While it does give some credence to the "shorter hospital stay" result -- having reached it in to Gilead initiated RCTs -- It was statistically significant but not dramatic;

And now another trial says even that's not so significant.

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