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A new study released Monday said Merck ’s widely used antiviral Covid pill can cause mutations in the virus that occasionally spread to other people, raising questions about whether the drug has the potential to accelerate Covid’s evolution. The findings may increase scrutiny about the usefulness of the treatment, molnupiravir, which was one of the first Covid drugs available to doctors worldwide during the pandemic. Molnupiravir works by causing mutations in Covid’s genetic information, which weakens or destroys the virus and reduces the amount of Covid in the body. However, the study published Monday in the scientific journal Nature found...

A new study released Monday said Merck ’s widely used antiviral Covid pill can cause mutations in the virus that occasionally spread to other people, raising questions about whether the drug has the potential to accelerate Covid’s evolution. The findings may increase scrutiny about the usefulness of the treatment, molnupiravir, which was one of the first Covid drugs available to doctors worldwide during the pandemic. Molnupiravir works by causing mutations in Covid’s genetic information, which weakens or destroys the virus and reduces the amount of Covid in the body. However, the study published Monday in the scientific journal Nature found...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, struggling to convince Americans that he's improved their lives as he runs for reelection, hailed his administration's Tuesday announcement that several drugs would be targeted for Medicare's first-ever price negotiations. The drugs include the blood thinner Eliquis, diabetes treatment Jardiance and eight other medications. The negotiation process was authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed last year, capping decades of debate over whether the federal government should be allowed to haggle with pharmaceutical companies. Any lower prices won't take effect for three years, and the path forward could be further complicated by...

If you own a business, the leftists in Congress are coming for you. The only thing standing in their way is the US Constitution. Whether you own a mom-and-pop diner, an auto-repair shop or shares in a multinational corporation, your property is at risk. The Constitution’s “takings clause” was designed to protect us from government grabbing our property without paying fairly for it. But last year, Democrats rammed through the Inflation Reduction Act, boasting it would enable Medicare to “negotiate” lower prices for medications for seniors. “Negotiate” is a lie. Under the new law, the feds can strong-arm companies to...

Global drugmaker Merck on Tuesday sued the Biden administration over Medicare’s new powers to substantially reduce drug prices for seniors under the Inflation Reduction Act, the opening salvo in the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to weaken the program. In a scathing complaint filed in federal district court, Merck excoriated the negotiation process as a “sham” and “tantamount to extortion.” The drugmaker accused the federal government of employing what the company described as an unconstitutional scheme to take private property for public use without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The company asked the U.S. District Court for the District...

The names of the COVID-19 variants are getting longer. The current version is omicron-XBB.1.5, and it is credited with a spike in hospitalizations during late December in New York City that is now moving throughout the Northeast. Coincidentally, this is the country’s most highly vaccinated and boosted region. According to an analysis by Eric Topol, executive vice president of the Research Department of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Institute, XBB.1.5 has mutations that lead to immune escape and possesses a distinct growth advantage against the previous dominant omicron variant, BQ.1. More great news includes a study published in Cell that...

The COVID-19 antiviral drug Molnupiravir helps speed up recovery from the virus but does not reduce the hospitalization or death rate in higher-risk vaccinated adults, a new study has found.Molnupiravir, from Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck & Co. is used to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 and can be taken at home, twice a day for five days, within five days of symptoms onset.It works by stopping the virus from replicating, keeping levels low in the body, thus reducing its severity.The study was published in The Lancet on Dec. 22 and has been peer reviewed.Between Dec. 8, 2021 and April 27,...

Merck & Co Inc's Covid-19 antiviral molnupiravir speeds up recovery but does not reduce the hospitalisation or death rate in higher-risk vaccinated adults, detailed data from a large study showed on Thursday (Dec 22). The drug, which prevents the virus from replicating, generated nearly US$5 billion (S$6.76 billion) in sales for the US drugmaker in the first three quarters of 2022. Preliminary data from the study, carried out in the winter of 2021-2022 when the Omicron variant was dominant, was unveiled in October. As a result, doctors are already considering limiting molnupiravir's use, for instance, in Australia.

A customized Moderna Inc. vaccine combined with a Merck & Co. cancer drug helped ward off the recurrence of the skin cancer melanoma after surgery in patients in a mid-stage clinical trial, the companies said. The companies said Tuesday the combination of Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine and Merck’s Keytruda cancer immunotherapy reduced patients’ risk of relapse or death by about 44%, versus Keytruda alone, in the 150-volunteer study. The results, which the companies said were statistically significant but haven’t been reviewed by independent scientists, suggest promise for an emerging but unproven class of vaccines that aim to treat diseases rather...

SCIENTISTS are working on a cancer vaccine which will be personalised for individual patients. The new jab will be used to treat treat patients with high-risk melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer. Manufacturers Moderna and Merck have said results of the trial, which will determine whether it stops cancer coming back, are expected by the end of the year. The experimental vaccine is based of of the same messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that was used to create the revolutionary Covid vaccines. The cancer shot is tailored for each patient to generate T-cells - a key part of the...

BENGALURU, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Indian drugmaker Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd (REDY.NS) will launch its generic version of Merck's (MRK.N) antiviral COVID-19 pill, molnupiravir, and price it at 35 rupees ($0.4693) per capsule, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday. The overall cost for a patient treated with a 5-day course of 40 capsules of the generic drug, to be sold under brand name 'Molflu', will come up to 1,400 rupees ($18.77). In comparison, the treatment with Merck's pill in the United States costs $700.

India’s top health research body announced on Wednesday that it won’t be adding Merck’s COVID-19 antiviral pill molnupiravir to its national treatment protocol, citing concerns over its safety.The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said it had become aware of “major safety concerns” that prompted the decision, despite India’s drug regulator in December approving the drug for emergency use.It comes after France in December also canceled its order for the drug, developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, following disappointing trial data suggesting its drug was markedly less effective than previously thought.“Molnupiravir has major safety concerns including teratogenicity, mutagenicity, muscle...

A petition from advocacy groups is calling for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop claiming it does not have relationships with or accept financial support from drug manufacturers and other companies that might benefit from agency research. The CDC has accepted millions of dollars through the CDC Foundation, according to the groups behind the petition. During fiscal years 2014 through 2018, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from companies like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck. Since it was created by Congress in 1995, the nonprofit organization has accepted $161 million from corporations. Public Citizen, Knowledge Ecology International,...

STORY AT-A-GLANCEAn advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted to grant emergency authorization to Merck’s oral COVID-19 pill molnupiravir (Lagevrio) — by a narrow 13-to-10 marginAmong those who received the drug, the rate of all-cause hospitalization or death was 6.8%, compared to 9.7% in the placebo group — a relative risk reduction of just 30%The full data showed more hospital admissions among patients taking molnupiravir (6.2%) than among those taking a placebo (4.7%)Molnupiravir works by triggering mutations that ultimately kill the virus; a risk of cancer and birth defects is possible, and the drug shouldn’t be taken...

In late June, the University of Oxford announced that PRINCIPLE, one of the U.K. Government’s national priority platform trials of COVID-19 treatments, would be evaluating Ivermectin, the seventh treatment to be investigated in the PRINCIPLE trial. Along with the influenza antiviral drug favipiravir, Ivermectin, the “safe, broad-spectrum antiparasitic drug,” was added as part of the trial’s focus on treatment for people in the U.K. who have recently developed symptoms of COVID-19. Yet, suddenly, without an explanation from Merck—who is a key manufacturer of the generic, readily available drug Ivermectin—MedPage Today reports that PRINCIPLE’s trial on the drug is paused, stating:...

An alarming admission was found near the bottom of a recent New York Times article about pharmaceutical giant Merck’s new Covid drug molnupiravir. Approved by the FDA two weeks ago, the drug was studied on isolated hamster cells for 32 days before being given the green light. While the FDA narrowly voted to recommend emergency use authorization for the drug, France’s National Authority of Health on Friday cited the pill’s own lack of efficacy as it ruled it will not be used in the European nation. According to the NYT report, “A team of researchers at the University of North...

Merck’s antiviral pill for COVID-19, molnupiravir, appears to be far less effective than early results from the clinical trial first suggested.According to an analysis by scientists at the FDA, the experimental pill cut the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by about 30%, compared to a placebo, and the pill showed no benefit for people with antibodies against COVID-19 from prior infection.The updated analysis showed 48 hospitalizations or deaths among study participants who were randomly assigned to take the antiviral drug, compared to 68 among those who took a placebo.Those results come from the full set of 1,433 patients...

Pharmaceutical giant Merck said Friday that its COVID-19 pill could be less effective than originally thought. The drugmaker said the experimental pill, molnupiravir, was shown to be 30 percent effective in fighting hospitalizations and deaths in a study of 1,433 patients.

The Biden administration is expected to announce this week that it is purchasing 10 million courses of Pfizer’s covid pill, a multibillion-dollar investment in medication that officials hope will help change the trajectory of the pandemic by staving off many hospitalizations and deaths, according to two people with knowledge of the transaction. U.S. officials see this antiviral pill, and another by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, as potential game-changers to help restore a broader sense of normalcy and are eager to add them to a small arsenal of treatments for Americans who contract the coronavirus. With breakthrough cases rising and 30...

Britain authorized the world’s first antiviral pill to treat the coronavirus, which may cut the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 in half among the unvaccinated. Britain on Thursday granted conditional authorization to drugmaker Merck's COVID-19 antiviral pill, becoming the first country in the world to OK the virus treatment. The drug, developed by U.S.-based Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is the first pill to gain regulatory approval to treat the coronavirus, aimed at alleviating mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in at-risk adults. It's intended to be taken twice per day for five days. The authorization comes after the drug garnered positive results...