
Enlarge / A employee handles a bottle of Merck & Co. and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LPs molnupiravir antiviral medicine in a warehouse in Shoham, Israel, on January 18, 2022. (credit score: Getty | Kobi Wolf)
With each new an infection, the pandemic coronavirus will get new probabilities to mutate and adapt, creating alternatives for the virus to evolve new variants which are higher at dodging our immune programs and making us sicker.
Anti-viral medicine, comparable to Paxlovid and remdesivir, intention to halt this incessant evolution in particular person sufferers—shortening diseases, snuffing out alternatives for mutation, and decreasing transmission. However one antiviral seems to be backfiring—permitting SARS-CoV-2 extra alternatives to mutate.
In accordance with a brand new peer-reviewed examine within the journal Nature, the anti-viral drug dubbed molnupiravir is linked to particular SARS-CoV-2 mutation signatures that occurred to spring up in 2022 when the drug was launched.
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