A Pill to Prevent COVID-19 Shows Promise

BThere now, most people have reached a resigning acceptance when it comes to COVID-19. We accept that we are likely to be infected at some point during the respiratory disease season – and that when we do it, we will feel sick for a few days, then we will surf it.

But what happens if you could avoid being covered in 19?

This is the potential promise of a new study on a drug manufactured by the Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi. At a scientific conference in San Francisco, the researchers reported that their medication, SESTERLVIR, helped prevent people exposed to SARS-COV-2 to test positive for the disease.

There is currently no drug approved to prevent COVID-19, but the supervision is already approved in Japan as a treatment for COVID-19. He reduces hospitalizations for COVID-19 in people at the most risk of complications; For the less vulnerable, it reduces the number of days when they are sick with symptoms. The Food and Drug Administration of the United States is considering the drug for accelerated approval as a way to prevent COVVI-19, based on this last study presented at the conference of retrovirus and opportunistic infections. (The study has not yet been published in a review evaluated by peers.)

The researchers studied more than 2,300 people aged 12 and over who had not covid-19 but who lived with someone who had been tested positive at the time of the study. They were then randomly assigned to receive Essitrelvir or placebo pills for five days. Everyone in the study began to take their pills once a day within three days of the moment when their roommate reported for the first time the symptoms of COVID-19.

Among those who have taken Sentrelvir, around 3% ended up developing COVVI-19, compared to 9% of those who take a placebo. It turned out that around 10% of the members of the household of the person who were initially tested positive were also positive, even if they did not present symptoms and did not realize that they were positive – which underlines how transmissible the virus can be and how important it is to protect people from infection. The results mean that the drug has lowered the risk of obtaining a COVVI-19 of 67%.

The idea of ​​using antiviral treatment to protect people at high risk of infection is not new. Treatment of the popular ooseltamivir, or Tamiflu flu, is effective about 84% to protect people from flu when someone else in his house. But when scientists have studied antiviral treatments for COVID-19, like Paxlovid and Molnuperavir, they did not find the same preventive advantages.

Learn more:: When does Tamiflu are worth it?

“This study is the first where this strategy [to prevent COVID-19] Was documented to succeed, ”explains Dr. Frederick Hayden, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, who presented the data during the conference.

Finding a way to prevent COVID-19 is essential, especially for the elderly, immunocompromised people and others who are at high risk of developing complications. In the study, the people in this category who took the drug reduced their risk of obtaining a COVVI-19 by 76%. Avoiding infection also allows people to bypass complications such as the long cocvid, for which there is not yet a lot of treatments.

Because Shitrelvir works by blocking the virus’s ability to make more copies of itself, it is logical that he can both treat and prevent illnesses, as people take it. The COVVI-19 treatment dose is the same as the dose used in the study to prevent diseases. If people take a teacher early – within three days to be closely exposed to a person with virus – then the drug can actually hinder SAR -COV -2 to prevent him from infecting too many cells. If people take it after being infected, the drug can help reduce the amount of virus that the immune system should manage and reduce the chances of serious illness.