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The course of action of the new drug to Corona has already saved us once
Pfizer's news of an effective cure for corona has moved many - and rightly so.
Examining the mechanism of action of the promising treatment brought Dr. Liora Berzag-Pro back to the difficult days of the AIDS epidemic. So how does the new drug for Corona work - and how does it relate to HIV?
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Dr. Liora Bergz-Pro
Sunday, 07 November 2021, 11:13 Updated: 11:50
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In the video: Pfizer CEO refers to Corona's new drug (Photo: Reuters)
Somewhere in 1981, gay men in New York and California developed a strange disease that first led to the appearance of blisters known as "capuchi sarcoma" - until then a disease that mainly affected older men, usually in parallel with the appearance of rare pneumonia.
After about a year this disease was already there: acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), and a clear course of action - it destroys the immune system and causes the body to be exposed to many diseases.
By 1983, the HIV-causing virus had been discovered.
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The pursuit of a cure for the new epidemic began, but there were two main difficulties: the virus harms the immune system cells that would normally protect the body from the exact same invaders, and the type of virus that is manipulative and uses host cells to replicate and spread much faster than a virus. simple".
In 1987, a drug called zidobudine was found that helps stop the virus from replicating but does not eliminate it, it also reduces the virus' penetration from mother to fetus.
The drug did not work well on its own, patients suffered from side effects such as liver dysfunction and bone marrow suppression, and its cost was high (at the time it was the most expensive drug in history) and patients had to stop treatment.
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In 1990, AIDS became the leading cause of death among Americans aged 25-44.
Due to the fact that the virus is sophisticated and knew how to mutate to avoid its eradication, strains resistant to the drug Zidobudine and others that work by a similar mechanism began to develop.
And yet, little by little, in the mid-90s we stopped hearing about AIDS.
It suddenly was not so scary and people stopped dying because of stunts.
Two new groups of drugs have emerged: protease inhibitor and NNRTI, in combination of these two groups the cocktail was born.
NBA player Magic Johnson, for example, is celebrating 30 years of contracting HIV and thanks to this cocktail he is living a full and healthy life.
Same mechanism, different epidemic
So how does all this relate to Corona?
Pfizer published over the weekend the results of its study according to which new infections in Corona could take a pill that would reduce 89 percent of serious illness and death, in cases of risk factors.
The drug is based on the same mechanism of treatment of HIV - protease inhibitor.
Protase is an enzyme (protein protein), which is usually beneficial to the body, which helps break down other chemicals, for example helps in digestion or wound healing.
In some situations it also knows how to be less good and help viruses like HIV and hepatitis C thrive.
Once the protease action is blocked, the culture of the viruses is also prevented, thus preventing a serious illness.
Blocks the protease.
Pfizer's drug (Photo: Reuters)
The drug, to be called Paxlovid, is intended for patients who are considered to be at high risk: adults over the age of 60, immunocompromised and people in a medically-respiratory sensitive condition, such as people with extreme obesity.
The total cost of treatment with the new drug is estimated at about $ 700.
If the drug is approved by the FDA and fulfills the promise inherent in it, it may - together with the drug molnupiravir from the soup company, and in combination with the effective vaccines - also change the way we perceive the corona epidemic, and make life alongside it more possible.
And that is already a reason for optimism.
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