- Several oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 are currently being studied.
- Merck will ask for emergency use authorization for its daily pill after a clinical trial showed its drug molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by 50 percent.
- Proponents say the pills would provide people with an easy and accessible way to treat symptoms of COVID-19.
- Others, however, say developing antiviral treatments for other illnesses such as the flu have proven to be more difficult than first anticipated.
For some, treatment for COVID-19 could be as simple as taking a daily pill.
Several oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19 are in the works, including one that may be available soon.
Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics officials plan to seek emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration for their medication known as molnupiravir after what they described as a successful phase 3 clinical trial.
Company officials said today that molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by 50 percent for trial participants with mild to moderate symptoms who took the medication compared with participants who were given a placebo.
“With these compelling results, we are optimistic that molnupiravir can become an important medicine as part of the global effort to fight the pandemic,” said Robert M. Davis, CEO and president of Merck, in a statement.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, MPH, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, explained the clinical trial results and their importance.
“Molnupiravir is an antiviral (nucleoside analog) originally designed to be a broad spectrum against many viruses by inhibiting viral replication,” she told Healthline. “In the test tube, molnupiravir inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2, the agent that causes COVID-19, so it was tested first in a phase II trial that showed the time to viral RNA clearance decreased and a greater proportion of participants (92 percent) overall achieved viral clearance in those who received 800 mg molnupiravir twice daily.”
“Molnupiravir was then tested in a phase 3 trial of outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 who had at least one risk factor for developing severe disease to see if the drug worked to prevent hospitalization or death and the interim analysis of the trial (775 participants out of 1,500 enrolled) were released today,” she added. “The interim analysis of the trial (called MOVe-OUT) showed that molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 50 percent (7 percent of those on molnupiravir either hospitalized or died through Day 29 (28/385), compared with 14 percent of placebo-treated patients (53/377). Through Day 29, no deaths were reported in patients who received molnupiravir, as compared to 8 deaths in patients who received placebo.”
“This is a very exciting finding for the first outpatient antiviral to be likely to be approved for the treatment of mild-moderate COVID-19 and the company announces it will file for EUA, with the government already approving the purchase of 1.7 million doses based on this positive finding,” Gandhi concluded.
Pfizer and Roche are also conducting late-stage clinical trials on antiviral drugs that could treat people in the early stages of COVID-19.
If given emergency approval, these treatments could become available by early next year.
Source: healthline