3 ms·

I believe that this is the correct interpretation. From the findings section: Although not statistically significant, patients receiving remdesivir had a numer

I believe that this is the correct interpretation. From the findings section: Although not statistically significant, patients receiving remdesivir had a numerically faster time to clinical improvement than those receiving placebo among patients with symptom duration of 10 days or less (hazard ratio 1·52 [0·95–2·43]) In other words, the patients that were going to get better, got better regardless of if they got the drug or not. However, those that got the drug got better faster than those who got the placebo (but as gfodor points out, not a statistically significant change, but a trend).

gfodor 7y ago
Yeah, but it isn't statistically significant. So this claim is a statement about the data itself, not about anything beyond that. It does provide a reasonable direction for future research since it's a 'lead', but from a pure interventionary action basis, it seems to contain zero information.
- mbreese 7y ago
  Yeah, you're right about the significance... but (just using the data they provided in the summary), it does look like a trend, which might be better fleshed out with more numbers. It does seem to at least demonstrate the safety of the drug, but I'm not sure if that was the point of this study. This was the trial with patients with severe disease, so there is still a decent amount to be learned about potential for effects earlier in treatment. But there are other ongoing studies for earlier timepoints. https://www.gilead.com/purpose/advancing-global-health/covid-19/remdesivir-clinical-trials https://www.gilead.com/purpose/advancing-global-health/covid... https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656
acqq 7y ago
I am interpreting, however, "not statistically significant" as: "looking without calculating it appears it is faster, once it's calculated it turns out that appearance could be just a noise, not a real signal."
- mbreese 7y ago
  From the limited data in the summary, it looks like the mean time to outcome (getting better) was decreased with drug treatment, but the 95% CI is pretty wide and includes "no effect" in the CI. Honestly, there isn't much data here to work with, so it's hard to know exactly what they saw. But, I believe that the last patient would have come off study a little over a week ago (from the summary and clinical trial criteria), so this is all moving very fast.
subsubzero 7y ago
This sounds exactly like what tamiflu does, if you have the flu, get it prescribed early, your duration of having the flu goes from a week+ to 4-5 days. With that scenario being: taking the drug(tamiflu) very early. It is my suspicion that the earlier Remdesivir is taken the better the outcome. These patients are all somewhat late in the disease progression. So not surprised to see these results although the time to improve is a nice bonus.

gfodor 7y ago

Yeah, but it isn't statistically significant. So this claim is a statement about the data itself, not about anything beyond that. It does provide a reasonable direction for future research since it's a 'lead', but from a pure interventionary action basis, it seems to contain zero information.

mbreese 7y ago
Yeah, you're right about the significance... but (just using the data they provided in the summary), it does look like a trend, which might be better fleshed out with more numbers. It does seem to at least demonstrate the safety of the drug, but I'm not sure if that was the point of this study. This was the trial with patients with severe disease, so there is still a decent amount to be learned about potential for effects earlier in treatment. But there are other ongoing studies for earlier timepoints. https://www.gilead.com/purpose/advancing-global-health/covid-19/remdesivir-clinical-trials https://www.gilead.com/purpose/advancing-global-health/covid... https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656

acqq 7y ago

I am interpreting, however, "not statistically significant" as: "looking without calculating it appears it is faster, once it's calculated it turns out that appearance could be just a noise, not a real signal."

mbreese 7y ago
From the limited data in the summary, it looks like the mean time to outcome (getting better) was decreased with drug treatment, but the 95% CI is pretty wide and includes "no effect" in the CI. Honestly, there isn't much data here to work with, so it's hard to know exactly what they saw. But, I believe that the last patient would have come off study a little over a week ago (from the summary and clinical trial criteria), so this is all moving very fast.

subsubzero 7y ago

This sounds exactly like what tamiflu does, if you have the flu, get it prescribed early, your duration of having the flu goes from a week+ to 4-5 days. With that scenario being: taking the drug(tamiflu) very early. It is my suspicion that the earlier Remdesivir is taken the better the outcome. These patients are all somewhat late in the disease progression. So not surprised to see these results although the time to improve is a nice bonus.