Commonly Used Antiviral Could Prolong Pandemic

A new study has demonstrated that a commonly used antiviral could potentially supercharge viral evolution in immunocompromised patients, creating new variants and prolonging the pandemic. The findings have been warned about by experts such as William Haseltine and Michael Zlin for some time. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), found that the antiviral drug remdesivir can increase genetic diversity among SARS-CoV-2 viruses in immunocompromised patients. This increased diversity can lead to more mutations and potentially create new variants of the virus. Remdesivir is an antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences Inc., which was approved for emergency use in treating COVID-19 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year. It has since become one of the most widely used treatments for severe cases of COVID-19 around the world, including in countries like India where it is being administered to thousands of patients every day. The UCSF team studied samples from nine hospitalized COVID-19 patients who had been treated with remdesivir before they died or were discharged from hospital care between April 2020 and January 2021. They found that while remdesivir did not reduce viral load—the amount of virus present in a patient’s body—it did increase genetic diversity among SARS-CoV-2 viruses within these individuals, particularly those who were immunocompromised due to pre-existing conditions or other medications they were taking at the time of treatment. The findings suggest that remdesivir could be contributing to an increase in viral evolution, which could lead to more mutations and potentially create new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that are resistant to existing treatments or vaccines currently available against COVID-19. Experts have warned about this possibility for some time now but this is one of the first studies to provide evidence that this could indeed be happening with remdesivir treatment specifically. The authors caution that further research is needed to understand how exactly remdesivir affects viral evolution before any conclusions can be drawn about its safety or efficacy as a treatment option for COVID-19 patients going forward.