Promising New Covid Pill Shows Key Advantages Over Paxlovid, Trial. *New BQ, XBB Omicron Subvariants
- CNBC, Dec. 15, 2022. A promising new Covid pill shows key advantages over Paxlovid in trial. Ed.
A new antiviral pill for Covid was found to be as effective as Paxlovid at curbing mild to moderate illness among people at high risk of severe disease in a Phase 3 trial in China. The results, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that the treatment had fewer side effects than Paxlovid, the go-to antiviral for high-risk patients. Around 67% of people who took the experimental pill, called VV116, reported side effects, compared to to 77% who took Paxlovid.
The new pill was also less likely than Paxlovid to cause unexpected side effects due to reactions with other medications, such as those for insomnia, seizures or high blood pressure.
"You have a medication that looks to be just as good as Paxlovid, but less cumbersome," said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. VV116 is similar to the antiviral remdesivir, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved as an IV infusion. But the team behind the new drug — pharma companies Junshi Biosciences and Vigonvita Life Science — tweaked the formula so that the body can absorb it in pill form, said Dr. Peter Gulick, an associate professor of medicine at Michigan State University. Gilead Sciences, which developed remdesivir, is testing a similar oral version of its drug.
Gulick said people who have received intravenous remdesivir thus far have not seen their symptoms rebound in the days or weeks following the treatment the way people have with Paxlovid. In the trial of VV116, more than 380 people took the experimental drug, while a similarly sized group took Paxlovid. Both treatment courses lasted 5 days. The median time to recovery — defined as no Covid symptoms for 2 consecutive days — was 4 days for VV116 recipients and 5 days for those who took Paxlovid. After 4 weeks, around 98% of all participants had recovered, and no one developed severe Covid. Study co-author Ren Zhao, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. School of Medicine, called the trial a "great success" in a news release Thursday.
When it comes to specific side effects, around 26% of the trial participants who took Paxlovid said it altered their sense of taste — food tasted sour, sweet, bitter or metallic — but just 4% of people who took VV116 reported that experience. Although some people in both groups had elevated levels of triglycerides (fat in the blood that can increase the risk of heart disease or stroke), a smaller share of those in the VV116 group saw that effect: 11% compared to 21% of participants who took Paxlovid. That reduced likelihood of side effects is "a big deal," Galiatsatos said. Three-quarters of the trial participants were vaccinated, though the study found consistent results regardless of vaccine status.
U.S. medical experts said it will be important to study the pill in a larger, more diverse group. Such trials could better catch rare side effects and examine how the drug holds up against newer omicron subvariants that have emerged since the study period...- Read More, https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/12/30/a-promising-new-covid-pill-shows-key-advantages-over-paxlovid-in-trial.html
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* New BQ, XBB Omicron Subvariants Pose Serious Threat to Boosters, & Knock Out Antibody Response, Study Says,
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/14/covid-news-bq-xbb-omicron-subvariants-pose-serious-threat-to-boosters.html
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