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An anti-Covid drug extensively used the world over could have triggered mutations within the virus, researchers mentioned on Monday, however there was no proof that the modifications had led to extra harmful variants.
Pharmaceutical big Merck’s antiviral tablet molnupiravir was one of many earliest remedies rolled out throughout the pandemic to stop Covid turning into extra extreme in susceptible individuals.
The drug, which is taken orally over a five-day course, works primarily by creating mutations within the virus with the aim of weakening and killing it. Nevertheless, a brand new UK-led examine has proven that molnupiravir “may give rise to considerably mutated viruses which stay viable,” lead writer Theo Sanderson mentioned.
Sanderson, a geneticist at London’s Francis Crick Institute, emphasised that there isn’t a proof that “molnupiravir has to this point created extra transmissible or extra virulent viruses.” Not one of the variants which have swept the world have been because of the drug, he added. However “it is rather troublesome to foretell whether or not molnupiravir therapy may probably result in a brand new extensively circulating variant which individuals don’t have prior immunity to,” he added.
