Antiviral pills: COVID-19 treatment at our fingertips

With the global pandemic coming close to its two year anniversary, exciting progress is being made in the treatment and prevention of the deadly virus. Antiviral drugs have been used to treat several infections in the past, and can be administered in many different forms. Scientists are now developing antiviral pills to help in the treatment of patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This video explores the roles of antiviral drugs in treating viral infections, and describes two forerunners in antiviral pill development. Merck & Co recently submitted an FDA application for their investigational drug Molnupiravir, and Pfizer’s investigational drug PF-07321332 is in the human subject testing phase. Both of these pills aim to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and to decrease hospitalizations and deaths caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While these pills are new and exciting, they should be used as an additional tool alongside vaccines. Watch this video to find out more about these antiviral pills and the treatment of COVID-19.

This video was made by McMaster students Maral Aminaei, Stefano Biasi, Lauren Birchenough, Wendy Tang in collaboration with the McMaster Demystifying Medicine Program.

Copyright McMaster University 2021.

References:
1. 9 Things You Need To Know About the New COVID-19 Pill. (n.d.). Yale Medicine. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/9-things-to-know-about-covid-pill
2. Antivirals: Antiviral Medication, What they treat & How they work. (n.d.). Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/21531-antivirals
3. de Vries, M., Mohamed, A. S., Prescott, R. A., Valero-Jimenez, A. M., Desvignes, L., O’Connor, R., Steppan, C., Devlin, J. C., Ivanova, E., Herrera, A., Schinlever, A., Loose, P., Ruggles, K., Koralov, S. B., Anderson, A. S., Binder, J., & Dittmann, M. (2021). A Comparative Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Antivirals Characterizes 3CL pro Inhibitor PF-00835231 as a Potential New Treatment for COVID-19. Journal of Virology, 95(10). https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.01819-20
4. Langmaid, V. (2021, October 3). What would an antiviral pill mean for the fight against COVID-19? Coronavirus. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/what-would-an-antiviral-pill-mean-for-the-fight-against-covid-19-1.5609170
5. Wang, Y., & Zhu, L.-Q. (2020). Pharmaceutical care recommendations for antiviral treatments in children with coronavirus disease 2019. World Journal of Pediatrics, 16(3), 271–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12519-020-00353-5
6. Willyard, C. (2021). How antiviral pill molnupiravir shot ahead in the COVID drug hunt. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02783-1
7. Yousefifard, M., Zali, A., Mohamed Ali, K., Madani Neishaboori, A., Zarghi, A., Hosseini, M., & Safari, S. (2020). Antiviral therapy in management of COVID-19: A systematic review on current evidence. Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine, 8(1), e45.

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