The corona inhibitors for oral use have already been purchased, but what can we expect from those medicines? Experts Steven Van Gucht and Johan Neyts explain.
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The first treatments with pills against corona will start this month. For now only in high-risk patients. The most talked about drugs are Paxlovid and Molnupiravir. Both must be able to block the virus from multiplying.
Paxlovid (from Pfizer) acts on the proteins of the virus, virologist Steven Van Gucht tells The newspapaer. As a result, the proteins can no longer be formed in a normal, correct way and the virus loses an important part of its building blocks. Molnupiravir then acts on RNA, the genetic material of the virus that can no longer be copied correctly.
Both drugs therefore inhibit the multiplication of the virus, says Van Gucht.
Paxlovid is specifically made against the coronavirus. The other drug was devised to stop the flu virus, according to virologist Johan Neyts at The newspapaer. According to him, it is therefore less powerful and less efficient against corona.
When people show the first symptoms and are treated, in clinical studies we see that Paxlovid means an 89 percent reduction in the chance that corona will lead to hospitalization or death, according to Neyts. With Molnupiravir this is 30 percent. But that’s not a bad figure either, says Neyts. His colleague Van Gucht does point out that these studies are relatively small studies and that it is therefore far from certain that both drugs will ultimately achieve the same result in practice.
There are also other research institutes that are working on a medicine. Gilead, for example, works with Remdesivir, a drug that was already used (via an IV) when people had already ended up in hospital. And that turned out to be too late, according to Neyts. When high-risk patients are treated earlier – within seven days after the first symptoms – the drug does achieve good results. Gilead is now working on an oral version of the drug, Neyts recalls.
Strictly speaking, the drugs could also be administered preventively. But that’s not the point. It is not even the intention to use the drugs on everyone who tests positive, says Van Gucht. In the first year, the drugs will mainly be administered to people who are most at risk: the very elderly with underlying problems, for example, cancer patients…
Van Gucht fears, for example, that a very wide use of the medicines could lead to the virus learning to bypass the medicine. Already initial studies indicate that this is not easy for the virus. The drugs will not be cheap. In the United States, for example, a treatment with Pfizer’s pills costs 470 euros.
The pills are therefore not immediately a big game changer in the fight against corona. According to Steven Van Gucht, there is no such thing as one game changer: it is a set of measures such as distancing rules, mouth masks, vaccinations. But the drugs will help us, he says. “I’m very optimistic about that, it’s a useful addition to our arsenal of weapons against the virus.”
Neyts does point out that the importance of medicines should not be underestimated: if they effectively ensure that people do not end up in hospital, the pressure on our healthcare system will be lower.
Also read: Pfizer promises ‘revolution against pandemic’ with corona pill
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