WASHINGTON: Current medicine for treating Covid-19 remains very effective against the omicron variant of the SARS-COV-2 virus, according to a laboratory study.
However, antibody therapy is available – usually given intravenously in hospitals – substantially less effective against omicron compared to the previous virus variant, the researchers said.
Lab tests also show that some antibodies fully lose their ability to neutralize omicrons at realistic doses, they said.
“The point is we have a reply to treat omicrons.
That’s good news,” said the main author Yoshihiro Kawaoka, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
“However, this is all in a laboratory study.
Is this translated into humans, we don’t know,” Kawaoka said.
These findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, strengthens other studies that show the most effective antibody treatment of antibodies against omicron.
Clinically available pills and antibodies were designed and tested before the researchers identified Omicron variants, which differ significantly from the previous version of the virus.
When Omicron is identified, scientists are worried that these differences, caused by mutations in the virus genome, can reduce the effectiveness of the drug designed to treat the original version of the virus.
In the lab experiment using non-human primate cells, Kawaoka and colleagues at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan testing a series of antibody therapy and antivirus against the original strain of the Covid-19 virus and its prominent variants.
They found that US pharmaceutical companies Merck Molnupiravir and intravenous remedies of remodesivir were as effective with Omicron because they opposed the previous viral strain.
Instead of testing Pachlovid Pfizer pills, designed to be taken orally, the team tests related drugs by companies given intravenously.
The two drugs interfere with the viral part of the same part.
The researchers found that the intravenous form of the drug maintained its effectiveness of Omicron, and this version is currently in clinical trials.
The four antibody treatments tested by researchers were less effective against omicrons than against the previous virus strain.
Two treatments, Sotrovimab by GlaxoSmithkline and Evusheld by AstraZeneca, maintain some ability to neutralize the virus, according to the researchers.
However, they need anywhere from 3 to 100 times more drugs to neutralize Omicron compared to the previous version, they said.
The study also shows that two antibody treatments by Lilly and Regeneron cannot neutralize omicrons at general doses.
The researchers said the findings were expected to remember the omicron variants differed from the previous SARS-COV-2 virus strain.
Omicron has dozens of mutations in spike proteins, which are used by viruses to enter and infect cells.
Most antibodies are designed to bind and neutralize the original surge protein and major changes in proteins that can make antibodies that tend to attach to them.
Conversely, antivirus pills target molecular machines used by viruses to make their own copies in cells, the researchers said.
Omicron variants only have some changes to this machine, which makes it more likely that the drug will maintain their ability to disrupt this replication process, he added.