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+--- Thread: Mutant X [ aka Proteus ]?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spreads…. (/showthread.php?tid=280651)
Mutant X [ aka Proteus ]?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spreads…. - NewtonMP2100 - 09-25-2023
…..according to new study….molnupiravir works by causing mutations that weaken the virus….but it may make mutations that then spread…..yikes….
Merck Covid drug linked to virus mutations that can spread between people, new study says
.....A new study released Monday said Merck's widely used antiviral Covid pill can cause mutations in the virus that occasionally spread to other people, raising questions about whether the drug has the potential to accelerate Covid's evolution.
The findings may increase scrutiny about the usefulness of the treatment, molnupiravir, which was one of the first Covid drugs available to doctors worldwide during the pandemic.
Molnupiravir works by causing mutations in Covid's genetic information, which weakens or destroys the virus and reduces the amount of Covid in the body. However, the study published Monday in the scientific journal Nature found that Covid can sometimes survive treatment with molnupiravir, leading to mutated versions of the virus that have been found to spread to other patients.
Researchers in the U.S. and U.K. specifically analyzed 15 million Covid genomes to see which mutations had occurred and when. They found that mutations increased in 2022 after molnupiravir was introduced in many countries.
There is no evidence that molnupiravir, sold under the brand name Lagevrio, has produced more transmissible or severe variants of Covid, according to the study.
But the findings are important for regulators who continue to assess the risks and benefits of molnupiravir, wrote Theo Sanderson, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London, in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
A spokesperson for Merck pushed back on the new study, claiming the researchers assumed that the mutations they analyzed were associated with molnupiravir-treated patients "without documented evidence of that transmission."
"Instead, the authors rely on circumstantial associations between the region from which the sequence was identified and timeframe of sequence collection in countries where molnupiravir is available to draw their conclusion," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that genomes with the mutations were "uncommon and were associated with sporadic cases."
The company in February also disputed an earlier study by the same team of researchers, which suggested that molnupiravir is giving rise to new mutations of the virus in some patients. Based on data at the time, a spokesperson for Merck said it didn't believe molnupiravir was likely to contribute to Covid mutations.
The new study comes as Covid once again gains a stronger foothold in the U.S., primarily driven by newer strains of the virus.
But the U.S. and other countries appear to be relying less on molnupiravir to fend off Covid this year: Sales of the drug dropped to around $200 million during Merck's third quarter, down 83% from the more than $1 billion reported during the same period a year ago.
Merck's molnupiravir has long been controversial because of its ability to cause genetic mutations.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration first approved the drug for emergency use in late 2021. But the FDA recommends against using Lagevrio during pregnancy because non-clinical studies suggest that it may cause fetal harm.
Molnupiravir also isn't authorized for use in patients under 18 because it may affect bone and cartilage growth........
…….yowzers..…….?!
Re: Mutant X?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spread…. - ka jowct - 09-25-2023
"There is no evidence that molnupiravir, sold under the brand name Lagevrio, has produced more transmissible or severe variants of Covid, according to the study."
I wish I had complete confidence in Merck, but I remember what happened with Vioxx. If they had been transparent about its side effects, Vioxx probably could have stayed on the market.
It was the only competitor to Celebrex, and after Vioxx was pulled, Pfizer cancelled a bunch of Celebrex marketing studies that my old employer was scheduled to run. This directly cost me freelance income and did very bad things to the company's financial health. Ripple effect.
Re: Mutant X?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spread…. - PeterB - 09-25-2023
Ugh. I hate when news headlines like this are so misleading... we need to do a deeper dive on the information presented. Here's the abstract for the study to which they are referring:
"Molnupiravir, an antiviral medication that has been widely used against SARS-CoV-2, acts by inducing mutations in the virus genome during replication. Most random mutations are likely to be deleterious to the virus, and many will be lethal, and so molnupiravir-induced elevated mutation rates reduce viral load1,2. However, if some patients treated with molnupiravir do not fully clear SARS-CoV-2 infections, there could be the potential for onward transmission of molnupiravir-mutated viruses. Here we show that SARS-CoV-2 sequencing databases contain extensive evidence of molnupiravir mutagenesis. Using a systematic approach, we find that a specific class of long phylogenetic branches, distinguished by a high proportion of G-to-A and C-to-T mutations, appear almost exclusively in sequences from 2022, after the introduction of molnupiravir treatment, and in countries and age-groups with widespread usage of the drug. We identify a mutational spectrum, with preferred nucleotide contexts, from viruses in patients known to have been treated with molnupiravir and show that its signature matches that seen in these long branches, in some cases with onwards transmission of molnupiravir-derived lineages. Finally, we analyse treatment records to confirm a direct association between these high G-to-A branches and the use of molnupiravir."
... so in other words, evolution gonna happen. No surprises there. If you treat an infection with a drug, you may end up selecting for resistant strains ... this has already been seen for decades with bacteria and such. Also that if you don't completely eliminate the infection, you might be more likely to see resistant strains survive. It is true that as a nucleoside prodrug, it might be more likely to cause mutations and therefore produce mutations and/or variants of concern, but I would think this would be true of most nucleoside analogs, and especially if the infection isn't actually eliminated by the drug. This might be a good argument to stick with protease inhibitors like Paxlovid.
Re: Mutant X?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spread…. - Speedy - 09-27-2023
Taking it beats dying.
Paxlovid Weaker Against Current COVID-19 Variants
https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/996755
A real-world study published in JAMA Open Network found that Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid is now less effective at preventing hospitalization or death in high-risk patients as compared to earlier studies. But when looking at death alone, the antiviral was still highly effective.
Paxlovid was about 37% effective at preventing death or hospitalization in high-risk patients compared to no treatment. The study also looked at the antiviral Lagevrio, made by Merck, and found it was about 41% effective. In preventing death alone, Paxlovid was about 84% effective compared to no treatment and Lagevrio was about 77% effective, the study said.
The University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Cleveland Clinic examined electronic health records of 68,867 patients at hospitals in Cleveland and Florida who were diagnosed with COVID from April 1, 2022, to Feb. 20, 2023.
For Paxlovid, the effectiveness against death and hospitalization was lower than the effectiveness rate of about 86% found in clinical trials in 2021, according to Bloomberg.
The difference in effectiveness in the real-world and clinical studies may have occurred because the early studies were conducted with unvaccinated people. Also, the virus has evolved since those first studies, Bloomberg reported.
Re: Mutant X [ aka Proteus ]?!….Merck’s COVID pill may cause virus mutations that then spreads…. - fauch - 09-29-2023
#SafeAndEffective