The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized this Thursday the emergency use of the pill against covid-19 from the American pharmaceutical company Merck, which operates in the rest of the world as MSD.
The FDA announced its decision in a statement and specified that The pill can be used to treat moderate cases of coronavirus in adults who have tested positive.or, who are at high risk of being hospitalized or dying from the disease and who have not been able to access other treatments authorized by the US authorities.
The FDA’s go-ahead for the MSD pill comes just one day after it authorized the uso emergency another anticovid pill produced by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The approval of the MSD pill comes just one day after the FDA authorized the emergency use of another anticovid pill produced by pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The two pills have several differences. For example, Pfizer’s can be given to children over 12 years of age, but MSD’s is not recommended for patients under 18 years of age because it can affect bone and cartilage growth, the FDA detailed in its statement.
Reduces the risk of death and hospitalization by 30%
Also, lThe MSD pill reduces the risk of death and hospitalization by 30%, a lower percentage than initially announced; while the Pfizer drug is 89% effective.
MSD’s pill, which will be sold under the name Molnupiravir, It can only be bought with a prescription and patients should take it as soon as they know they have the disease, at most within the first five days in which they have presented symptoms, the FDA detailed in its statement.
The treatment, which was already authorized in United KingdomIt consists of four 200-milligram capsules to be taken every 12 hours for up to five days. The drug works by attacking an enzyme that the covid-19 virus uses to make copies of itself, thus preventing its multiplication and keeping the viral load at low levels in the body, thereby reducing the severity of the disease. .
MSD hopes its pill will be effective against new variants, including omicron, since the drug affects parts of the virus that do not have to do with the spike protein, which is what usually varies in mutations.
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Pfizer has expressed the same hope, as its pill works by blocking a specific enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate. With the permission of the MSD pill, Americans will soon have available, to take at home if needed, two treatments against the disease.
The pills are expected to be a crucial tool to reduce hospitalizations, at a time when cases have skyrocketed by omicron. Until now, all treatments in the US against the disease were administered through an injection or intravenously.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com