washington early treatment with the antiviral drug remdesivir has been found to reduce viral load and prevent lung disease in macaques infected with sarscov2 that causes covid19 according to a studythe findings published in the journal nature on tuesday support the early use of remdesivir treatment in patients with covid19 to prevent progression to pneumoniaresearchers from the national institutes of health in the us noted that remdesivir has broad antiviral activity and has been shown to be effective against infections with sarscov and merscov in animal modelsthe drug is being tested in human clinical trials for the treatment of covid19 they saidresearcher emmie de wit and colleagues investigated the effects of remdesivir treatment in rhesus macaques a recently established model of sarscov2 infectiontwo sets of six macaques were inoculated with sarscov2one group was treated with remdesivir 12 hours later close to the peak of virus reproduction in the lungs and these macaques received treatment every 24 hours until six days after inoculationin contrast to the control group the researchers found that macaques that received remdesivir did not show signs of respiratory disease and had reduced damage to the lungsviral loads in the lower respiratory tract were also reduced in the treated animals viral levels were around 100 times lower in the lowerrespiratory tract of remdesivirtreated macaques 12 hours after the first dose they saidthe researchers said that infectious virus could no longer be detected in the treatment group three days after initial infection but was still detectable in four out of six control animalsdespite this virus reduction in the lower respiratory tract no reduction in virus shedding was observed which indicates that clinical improvement may not equate to a lack of infectiousness they saiddosing of remdesivir in the rhesus macaques is equivalent to that used in humans the researchers notedthey cautioned that it is difficult to directly translate the timing of treatment used in corresponding disease stages in humans because rhesus macaques normally develop only mild diseasehowever researchers said the results indicate that remdesivir treatment of covid19 should be initiated as early as possible to achieve the maximum treatment effect