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What’s been touted as a new Covid “wonderdrug” reportedly may cause the virus to mutate uncontrollably. Emily Craig of The Daily Mail reports:
Molnupiravir, sold under the brand name Lagevrio, works by stopping Covid from growing and spreading in an infected person, keeping virus levels low.
This helps the body’s immune system control the infection, reducing the risk of severe symptoms and hospitalisation.
Clinical trials suggest the drug — which was rolled out to patients in the UK from December 2021 and described as an ‘excellent addition’ to the country’s ‘armoury against Covid’ — halves the risk of being admitted or dying from Covid.
The team, which included scientists from the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, the University of Liverpool and the University of Cape Town, noted molnupiravir’s effects are a result of it triggering an array of mutations in the virus.
Many of the mutations damage or kill the virus.
What is molnupiravir?
Molnupiravir works by stopping Covid from growing and spreading in an infected person, keeping virus levels low.
This helps the body’s immune system control the infection, reducing the risk of severe symptoms and hospitalisation.
Clinical trials suggest the drug halves the risk of beding admitted or dying from Covid.
It it taken as four capsules twice a day for five days among those who have recently become infected and are vulnerable.
This includes cancer patients, those with Down’s syndrome and liver disease patients.Molnupiravir, taken as four capsules twice a day for five days, has not been linked to any serious side effects, though some patients report suffering from headaches, nausea and feeling dizzy.
In rare cases, it can trigger an allergic reaction.
However, in some patients, the virus is not fully cleared, meaning they can infect others with the molnupiravir-mutated virus.
They examined a family tree of 15million Covid sequences, collected from global databases, to map its mutations over time.
Covid mutates constantly and most have little to no impact on the virus’s properties, such as how transmissible it is or the severity of infection that it triggers.
However, in a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers said they spotted changes to the virus that looked very different to the expected patterns.
These mutations were strongly linked with people who had taken molnupiravir.
The team noted that the frequency of these mutations increased in 2022, which is when the rollout gathered pace.
The unusual changes to the virus were also more common among older people — who are more likely to be given the drug — in countries known to have high molnupiravir use and among samples taken during clinical trials of the drug.
Three in ten of the abnormal mutations seen in England were among those given the drug, according to the researchers.
The team also spotted clusters of odd mutations, suggesting that the tweaked version of the virus had been passed on to others. However, they noted that no variants of concern are linked to the mutations though to be triggered by the drug.
It is difficult to understand whether molnupiravir risks triggering new variants or whether these could risk public health.
Read more here.
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