Posted on 05/13/2020 8:36:07 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A candidate drug for treating the new coronavirus, favipiravir, has produced promising results in early clinical trials in Russia, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which provided 150 million roubles ($2 million) in funding for the project.
RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev said 60% of the 40 coronavirus patients taking tablets of favipiravir, which was first developed in Japan under the name Avigan, tested negative for the virus within five days and said the treatment could cut coronavirus recovery times in half.
Drugmakers are rushing to develop treatments and vaccines for the highly contagious coronavirus that has killed over 290,000 people worldwide, infected more than 4.2 million and ravaged economies globally.
Avigan, known generically as favipiravir, was developed in the late 1990s by a company later bought by Fujifilm as it moved into healthcare. The drug works by short-circuiting the reproduction mechanism of certain RNA viruses such as influenza.
Favipiravir is also undergoing trials in India by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Russia, which has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases behind the United States, is also testing vaccine prototypes on animals, while the RDIF has diverted funds to produce more tests domestically.
“This will reduce the burden on medical centres and, according to our estimates, will also reduce the number of epidemiologically dangerous patients by about 50%,” Dmitriev said, referring to a course of favipiravir treatment.
The clinical trial of 330 patients infected with the coronavirus should be finished by the end of May, said Andrei Ivashchenko, a professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences and chairman of the board of directors at ChemRar, the company conducting the trials.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Some good and bad news:
* Tests showed that there were minimal side effects,
* Pregnant women were prohibited from using it. The drug Avigan in Japan was found to cause birth defects.
* There was not enough data to say how effective the treatment would be for severely ill patients.
Who comes up with these dumbass drug names?
Any drug name ending with vir is an antiviral. The rest I don’t know.
Really? There is a code? LOL
What is the Fauci cost,profit ?
Fauci/ Birx are all in on destroying PDJT with this pandemic hoax.
t\They are tools of the commnist apparartihiki
Everyone’s looking ... that’s the good news.
Were the other 40% defenestrated?
Like Remdisivir, Favipiravir inhibits the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.
It sounds like it has the same effectiveness as the HCQ combo.
While Remdisivir seems more like a placebo than anything really useful.
We had a local man featured on one of our local news shows that was in critical condition. He was saved by Remdisivir.
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