A Covid drug newly approved in virus-hit China is causing the coronavirus to mutate in new ways, a study warns.
American and British researchers identified the new mutations in virus samples from dozens of patients receiving Merck’s antiviral drug Lagevrio.
The changes to the virus have made it no longer deadly or contagious, but experts say it undermines the risk of drugs working by tampering with Covid’s genetic code.
Although Lagevrio has rarely been used in the US or UK, it has just been approved for use in China, where officials have been relying on weak vaccines and treatments amid a devastating virus outbreak.
One expert warns that this use could lead to the emergence of new variants – even calling the continued use of Lagevrio in some parts of the world “alarming”.
Officials have been warning for months that rising infection rates in China — experts fear 250 million infections hit the country in December alone — could lead to a dangerous new strain. And that was before the latest discoveries.
Merck’s antiviral pill molnupiravir, sold under the name Lagevrio, can cause Covid to mutate. Although the discovered mutations are not considered dangerous, there are fears that further changes in the virus could now open the door to future problems (file photo).
Concerns that Lagevrio could cause mutations arose around the time it received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late 2021.
The drug works by creating mutations in the Covid genome that prevent the virus from multiplying in the body.
Although initially seen as a breakthrough, Pfizer’s Paxlovid overtook Lageviro as the global Covid antiviral that replaced Merck’s drug last year.
The latest study was published online as a preprint and was not peer-reviewed.
The team – which includes experts from the Francis Crick Institute, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge – looked at 13 million RNA sequences of the virus that causes Covid.
They analyzed the nucleic acid composition of RNA strands to look for evidence that the virus had mutated because of the drug.
In hundreds of samples, they found evidence that the drug induced replication. Almost all of the discoveries were made in samples collected in 2022 – the year they were made available globally – suggesting that Lagevrio is to blame.
“It is possible that some patients treated with molnupiravir may not fully recover from SARS-CoV2 infections, with the potential for further transmission of molnupiravir mutant viruses,” the researchers wrote.
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Merck, based in Rahway, New Jersey, denied the report, saying there was no evidence it had contributed to Covid variants or could do so in the future.
“There is no evidence that any antiviral drug contributed to the emergence of circulating variants,” Merck spokesman Robert Josephson told Bloomberg.
“Based on the available data, we do not believe that Lagevrio (molnupiravir) is likely to contribute to the development of new significant coronavirus variants.”
However, the results raise the possibility that worrisome strains of the virus will emerge in the future.
Some experts immediately pointed to the drug’s potential to cause worrisome mutations when it first made headlines in late 2021.
Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was one of those experts who warned against using the drug last year.
He told DailyMail.com on Thursday: “The use of molnupiravir in every country will contribute to the emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2.
“Given the low – essentially zero – efficacy of molnupiravir against SARS-CoV-2, and given the high mutagenic activity of molnupiravir and its contribution to the emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2, it is worrying that molnupiravir is and will always be used ubiquitously to treat SARS-CoV-2.”
Dr. William Haseltine, known as one of the world’s leading experts in human genome analysis, warned in late 2021 that the drug’s mode of action opens the door to danger.
“They are introducing a drug that is a powerful mutagen at a time when we are very concerned about new variants,” he told Forbes.
He added: “I can’t imagine doing anything more dangerous.
“If I were trying to create a new and more dangerous virus in humans, I would administer a subclinical dose [of molnupiravir] for people who are infected,” he continued.
The drug was approved for use by the FDA in December 2021. The approval was controversial among some experts over concerns about viral mutations.
However, it has shown the ability to reduce hospitalizations and deaths from the virus by 50 percent in clinical trials.
Soon after, Paxlovid received approval from Pfizer. With a higher 90 percent effectiveness against hospitalizations and deaths — and little concern about viral mutations — the latter quickly became America’s preferred means of fighting Covid.
Although molnupiravir was little used in much of the Western world, generic versions of it were used in less developed countries.
It has also been widely used to treat Covid patients in Australia.
It has also recently been used by Chinese officials to control Covid – with which experts strongly disagree.
In 2021, there were even fears that the vaccines themselves could encourage viruses to mutate.
Because of the immunity gap – where the majority of the population is vaccinated, but still a small portion that is not – the virus can find a way to protect itself from the injections.
This happened when the vaccine-resistant Omicron strain emerged in late 2021.
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
