What you need to know is that the name favipiravir is not the name of the medicine but the active substance that is in it. Of course, they usually make the drug under a similar name, possibly with some kind of supplement as in the photo.
Favipiravir was first approved in 2014 to treat influenza A and B viral infections in Japan. It can be administered orally in tablet form.
A year ago, favipiravir was also first used against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at the site of the COVID outbreak in China, as it is a broad-spectrum antiviral agent that can generally be effective against RNA viruses.
The new type of coronavirus is also an RNA virus, which is why favipiravir has come to the attention of Chinese doctors. In the studies, the control group did not use placebo, but the usual treatment. The studies showed that favipiravir was virus-free for an average of six days.
It significantly improved clinical symptoms, reduced fever, and reduced the number of days spent in hospital in patients receiving favipiravir. The recommended duration of favipiravir therapy is 5 days. The drug has previously been used effectively in patients treated in hospital.
At present, it can also be prescribed by a GP, and based on the prescription, the drug can be redeemed free of charge at pharmacies. The drug can prevent patients from getting more severe symptoms.
It is basically recommended for the treatment of patients with mild to moderate symptoms. Experience has shown that the active substance favipiravir inhibits the replication of viruses.
The drug is really effective when used at an early stage of the disease. Some experience has shown that favipiravir has been shown to be effective, but only in the early stages of infection.
Favipiravir is not a panacea and is not expected to be effective in advanced infection, so it is not a substitute for strict adherence to general antiviral measures and, most importantly, does not make vaccination unnecessary. In animal studies, favipiravir has been associated with birth defects in some cases when administered to pregnant animals.
Although such side effects have never been seen in humans, the drug should not be given to pregnant and breastfeeding women. The infection is followed by the onset of symptoms after a period of about five days.
Patients will then consult a doctor and the PCR test will usually be positive. From then on, seven to ten days are available for favipiravir to be used effectively. This is the time window when favipiravir treatment has a raison d’être.
Favipiravir does not help in severe cases.
favipiravir is no longer sufficient during the inflammatory phase of the disease, when patients usually have severe pneumonia. Therefore, it is very important that antiviral therapy is started immediately after confirmed COVID infection. During this period, favipiravir has been shown to be effective in reducing viral loads and symptoms.
It can help reduce
the number of patients in serious conditions and reduce the need for hospital care, which would be extremely important at the moment to alleviate the enormous pressure on the health care system. Clinical trial data show that taking favipiravir improves clinical symptoms in an average of six days, leading to fewer patients becoming serious.
(like remdesivir) inhibits the replication of the viral RNA inheritance and the replication of the virus. The agent inserts a fake code into the viral RNA, stopping copying. Due to this, it has been shown to be effective against a number of RNA viruses.
Laboratory studies suggest that remdesivir is effective against a wide range of viruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. The drug was intended to curb the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2013 to 2016. Although the drug was shown to be safe, it was not specifically effective against Ebola-like filoviruses.
Due to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2013 to 2016, remdesivir rapidly underwent clinical trials and was eventually used in at least one human patient despite the early developmental phase at the time. Preliminary results were promising and, following further clinical trials, were used for the Ebola outbreak in Kivu in 2018 until August 2019, when the Congolese authorities announced that they were much less effective than mAb114 and REGN-EB3 monoclonal antibody treatments. Nevertheless, the studies established its safety profile.
Patients who received the drug recovered in a shorter time and were able to leave the hospital sooner, and had a lower mortality rate than those who received placebo, according to The New England Journal of the World’s No. 1 Medical Journal. From a publication published in Medicine.
a record number of new cases of coronavirus has been set, so the government has decided to ban the export of the anti-coronavirus drug, Remdesivir, Bloomberg reports. Domestic demand for Remdesivir has increased significantly as the Indian Ministry of Health said on Sunday, as the number of new infections across the country has been significant for days.
As this demand is expected to continue to grow in the coming days, exports of Remdesivir will be banned.
In India, Remdesivir is currently manufactured by seven companies under a licensing agreement with Gilead, which can produce 3.9 million doses per month. The Indian government plans to further expand capacity and also eliminate the black market for the drug.
A number of therapeutic agents have already been studied for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2, released in December 2019, but not a single antiviral agent has been shown to be effective. Since the publication of preliminary reports, dexamethasone has been shown to reduce mortality in ventilated patients.
Remdesivir is an inherited substance-dependent RNA polymerase inhibitor that has also shown inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV viruses in vitro (experimental) and has therefore been considered a promising agent for the treatment of COVID-19. To demonstrate this, a phase III, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted, according to a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A multi-site study (USA, Denmark, UK, Greece, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Singapore) enrolled patients in a 1: 1 ratio who then randomized to receive a placebo they got. Patients treated with remdesivir received a starting dose of 200 mg on the first day and then a maintenance dose of 100 mg of intravenous remdesivir for a further 9 days for a total of 10 days. The placebo group received intravenous saline as a placebo on the same days and at the same time for 10 days.
Patients were examined for 29 days during their hospital stay, according to defined primary and secondary outcomes. In addition, the incidence of serious adverse events and complications in the analyzed population was investigated.
The study randomized 1,062 patients: 531 eventually received remdesivir and 517 received placebo. 64.4 percent of the participants were male, with a mean age of 58.9 years. The results showed that the mean healing time of the remdesivir-treated group was 10 days; in contrast, those treated with placebo for 15 days. A mortality study at day 15 showed a mortality rate of 6.7 percent (35 subjects) in the remdesivir group compared to 11.9 percent (61 subjects) in the placebo group.
At day 29, mortality increased to 11.4 percent in the remdesivir group and 15.2 percent in the placebo group. Remdesivir has been shown to be most effective in the early stages of the disease. At the start of the study, 913 patients who needed oxygen needed to take oxygen for a shorter time than those treated with remdesivir than those treated with placebo.
Overall, remdesivir was more effective than placebo. Patients treated with remdesivir recovered in a shorter time, could leave the hospital earlier, and were therefore in need of clinical care for a shorter time. The mortality projected for all individuals was 11.4 percent in the remdesivir group and 15.2 percent in the placebo group.
These data suggest that remdesivir may prevent disease progression and that there are fewer respiratory complications due to the disease than with placebo. Remdesivir has been fully or conditionally approved for COVID-19 in many countries, but patient mortality is high despite its use, so this antiviral agent alone is unlikely to be sufficient in all patients.
The most effective treatment appears to be the use of remdesivir as part of combination therapy with COVID antibody-rich plasma, steroids and blood thinners, supplemented with non-invasive ventilation and physiotherapy if necessary.
A compound similar to remdesivir is molnupiravir. This drug was developed in the United States about 40 years ago. An active substance that is also effective against influenza viruses and the new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) inhibits the growth of the genetic material of these viruses.
Experiments on different types of weasels have shown that molnupiravir can reduce the amount of coronaviruses in the airways and prevent the transmission of infection. The advantage of molnupiravir is that it is an oral drug that is absorbed from the intestinal tract.
If the tests are successful, Covid-19 can be conveniently treated in the future with 1 oral tablet twice a day. In the meantime, however, more questions remain to be answered, to which the ongoing clinical phase II. and III. studies may provide an answer.
Decades earlier, the possibility arose that molnupiravir could cause mutations as a side effect. At the moment, according to studies, this is a less threatening threat. To sum up the available knowledge, it is possible that molnupiravir will in the near future become a “game changer” against SARS-CoV-2 infectious chains, a “cannon” that can effectively break the infectious chains required for a Covid-19 pandemic.
U.S. researchers say Molnupiravir may be able to prevent an infected person from transmitting the coronavirus in 24 hours. The product is already being tested on patients. In a publication in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology, scientists say it is the first oral drug to achieve such an effect. They expect Molnupiravir to be of great help in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
Ferrets were placed next to animals that did not receive the drug. The study found that infected animals did not pass the virus on to their unprotected counterparts. According to experts, in humans, the drug may be able to prevent the patient from infecting others and developing severe symptoms in 24 hours.
The drug, which inhibits the growth of the virus, was developed at Emory University in Atlanta, originally to treat the flu. The drug has so far been tested on ferrets and tests show that Molnupiravir has been successful in reducing the amount of virus particles in their bodies.
An antiviral drug called molnupiravir, according to a recent study, prevents coronavirus-infected people from spreading the disease, protecting them from developing more severe symptoms, and thus preventing the development of local epidemics.
The COVID-19 vaccine could put an end to the pandemic, but as long as mass vaccination is not available, it is vital to stop the spread in the community. The new antiviral drug MK-4482 / EIDD-2801, also known as molnupiravir, which completely suppresses the spread of the new type of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in just 24 hours, could play a key role in the latter, the University of Georgia Biomedical Sciences From a study by his institute reported by greeenwichtime.com.
It is possible that the most effective drug to date has been developed to help combat the coronavirus epidemic. The new antiviral drug is called Molnupiravir, and researchers at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University in the United States say it can prevent an infected person from transmitting the virus in 24 hours.
“We have previously observed that MK-4482 / EIDD-2801 is very effective against respiratory RNA viruses, and that orally administered drug in infected animals has reduced the amount of virus particles by orders of magnitude and drastically reduced transmission.
These properties have made it a potential candidate for pharmacological studies against COVID-19, “the report adds. The researchers believe the drug could block the spread of the virus in infected people within 24 hours. As mentioned, this is an oral drug that can be started at an early stage of the infection for the following three potential benefits:
- prevents the infection from becoming a serious COVID-19 disease
- shortens the infectious phase, thus alleviating the emotional and socio-economic consequences of patients’ isolation,
- quickly inhibits the formation of local epidemics.
Molnupiravir is currently in the second phase of a three-stage clinical trial. This means that it is already given to patients infected with the coronavirus: for five days, every 12 hours, in different doses to find out what the ideal dosage is.