A single pill of the investigational drug molnupiravir taken twice a day for 5 days eliminated SARS-CoV-2 from the nasopharynx of 49 participants. Preclinical studies suggest that molnupiravir is effective against a number of viruses, including coronaviruses and specifically SARS-CoV-2.
Mechanism: It prevents a virus from replicating by inducing viral error catastrophe — essentially overloading the virus with replication and mutation until the virus burns itself out and can’t produce replicable copies.
In this phase 2a, randomized, double-blind control trial, researchers recruited 202 adults who were treated at an outpatient clinic with fever or other symptoms of a respiratory virus and confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by day 4. Participants were randomly assigned to three different groups: 200 mg of molnupiravir, 400 mg; or 800 mg. The 200 mg arm was matched one-to-one with a placebo-controlled group, and the other two groups had three participants in the active group for every one control.
Participants took the pills twice daily for 5 days, and then were followed for a total of 28 days to monitor for complications or adverse events. At days 3, 5, 7, 14, and 28, researchers also took nasopharyngeal swabs for PCR tests, to sequence the virus, and to grow cultures of SARS-CoV-2 to see if the virus that’s present is actually capable of infecting others.
Source: Medscape