Bhubaneswar: A study conducted by five researchers, including two of Odisha, stated that the novel Coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) can develop resistance to favipirail, one of the few antiviral drugs used broadly in India and other countries against other countries Lightweight-moderate Covid-19 case.
The lead author of the study, Aditya Kumar Padhi (33), a Roman postdoctoral research in the center of Biosystems Dynamics Research, Riken, Japan, said Favipiravir was used to prevent Coronavirus replication in the human body.
He said RNA RNA-dependent polymerase (RDRP) is a viral enzyme that helps viruses to reproduce or replicate in human cells.
Favipiravir does not allow RDRP enzymes to function and as a result of doubling the virus is stopped.
“All micro organisms mutate and develop over time.
This process accelerates when the drug pressure increases on the virus.
SARS-COV-2 can mutate and adjust to making favipiravir ineffective if the drug is widely used without caution,” the researchers said .
Padhi said the virus witnessed mutations in the RNA polymerase to develop favipiravir resistance with weakening interactions and binding between RDRP and Favipiravir enzymes.
The research team uses supercomputers and high throughput computing designs to identify potential resistance mutations and sites at RDRP SARS-COV-2 against Favipiravir.
They found that some high frequency mutations from the coronavirus identified from the genome sequencing in infected patients had been found to be favipirailavir.
Timir Tripathi from North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Jagneshwar Dandapat, Head of the Biotechnology Department of the University of Utkal and Vladimir N Uversky from the South University of Florida, the US, together states that their results and models are quite accurate to identify resistance mutations.
“Of the 134 documented mutations, 63 specific mutations have been predicted as resistant in our calculations, which reached around 47% of correlations with sequencing data.
Therefore, more infectious strain evolutionary opportunities provide increased favipiravir resistance because of its use because the Covid-19 pandemic is developing, “The researchers said.
This study was published in FEBS letters, journals from the European Biochemistry Community Federation (FEBS).