#Omicron emerged from HIV

[indiarightnow]

Is untreated HIV behind the emergence of Omicron?

Is untreated HIV behind the emergence of Omicron?

London: The hypothesis that the emergence of new Covid-19 variants could be linked, in some cases, to untreated HIV is “highly plausible”, according to South African scientists. To explore the link, a team of scientists have launched a probe into mutations taking place inside infected people whose immune systems have already been weakened by other factors, including, though not limited to,…

[screenshots123]

📆 28 Dec 2022 📰 XBB COVID variant presents a unique threat: study 🗞️ Fierce Healthcare

Japanese researchers say in a preprint study posted on Tuesday that XBB exhibits a unique path into existence not seen before in COVID-19 variants and this gives it more of a “profound resistance to antiviral humoral immunity induced by breakthrough infections of prior Omicron subvariants.”

Their findings (PDF) were posted on medRxiv, a website that features studies that have not yet been peer reviewed. XBB was first identified by researchers at Peking University in Beijing in September, and one of the authors of that study said that “XBB is currently the most antibody-evasive strain tested.”

The study unveiled Tuesday by researchers with the University of Tokyo, bolsters that assessment, stating that “to our knowledge, this is the first documented example of a SARS-CoV-2 variant increasing its fitness through recombination rather than single mutations.”

Recombination means the joining of variants that arise from two genetically distinct parental strains, creating opportunities for a virus to adapt to, and escape from, antibodies and other genetic roadblocks, be they produced by scientists or nature. Recombination presented a significant challenge in the early days of the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Kevin Kavanagh, M.D., is the president and founder of the patient advocacy organization Health Watch USA and has kept a close eye on COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. Kavanagh told Fierce Healthcare that “the most disturbing finding in the study is that this virus is a recombinant virus where two different genomes or genetic materials from viruses were recombined, as opposed to a chance mutation.”

“If viruses can start swapping genetic material, then the sky is the limit on the number of variants and the various characteristics which may be produced,” says Kavanagh.

University of Tokyo researchers said that “XBB acquired two sets of a pair of immune escape-associated and infectivity-enhancing substitutions by only one recombination event. Harboring the two sets of the substitution pairs would be one of the causes why XBB shows higher Re than other Omicron subvariants. Together, although XBB emerged via a unique evolutionary pathway, our data suggest that XBB also follows the same evolutionary rule with other Omicron subvariants.”

The R0, or R naught, estimates a pathogen’s contagiousness, accounting for biological features as well as behavior of individuals. Re is the same as R0, minus the assumption that everybody’s susceptible to infection.

[pcdpharma19-blog]

India is Going to Become a Center for Covid-19 Antiviral Drugs

The drug controller issued emergency use authorization to pharmaceutical businesses in India to produce generic versions of molnupiravir.

After the drug controller issued emergency-use authorization to multiple pharmaceutical businesses in India to produce and commercialize generic versions of molnupiravir, India will become the world's largest hub for Covid-19 antiviral general medication production.

As Omicron infections develop in India, increased availability to molnupiravir will maintain hospitalizations and deaths to a manageable level.

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Natco Pharma, Viatris, Hetero Drugs, and Mankind Pharma are among those who have received approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).

Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics developed Molnupiravir, the first ever oral antiviral medication for the treatment of severe individuals with mild to severe HIV infection. Covid-19.

Following the approval, many major pharmaceutical companies are planning to supply molnupiravir capsules in the upcoming days, with the remaining companies following the process.

As a result, India will become the world's largest producer of Covid-19 antiviral generic drugs. Molnupiravir's performance in the move-out phase III trial was promising, with a 50 % reduction in hospitalization in early-stage infections.

In India, the Covid-19 second wave peaked in April and May 2021, with daily average cases exceeding 4 lakh. Since then, caseloads have decreased dramatically, with the national total holding at just under 10,000 cases per day over the rest of the year.

However, the Omicron version, which is poised to supersede Delta as the prevalent variation, has caused an increase in daily Covid-19 cases in recent days.

According to the Union Health ministry, Covid-19 cases totaled 1,41,986 on January 8, 2022, with 3,071 of these cases verified as the Omicron variety.

Furthermore, India continues to fall short of its Covid-19 vaccination rollout target, with only 44.5 percent of the population having received the vaccine. As a result, given the slow vaccination rate and recent spike in Covid-19 cases, generic versions of molnupiravir may be able to dramatically lower.

Generic molnupiravir would improve access in India as well as other low- and middle-income nations (LMICs) while also removing present supply chain barriers.

In the United States, a 5 day treatment duration with molnupiravir costs roughly USD 712. (Rs 52,909). For a five-day course, generic versions of the medicine will costing between USD 18.79 (about Rs 1,400) and USD 21.48 (around Rs 1,600), which is much less.

We estimate molnupiravir generic versions to greatly expand availability in India as well as other LMICs after government approval because to their low cost.

Furthermore, as compared to Covid-19 intravenous antivirals like casirivimab/imdevimab or remdesivir, these oral antiviral medications will result in lower transport and distribution costs.

Oral medications do not require the use of glass vials because they are firm and compact, and the tablets can be closely packed without risk of breaking.

Similarly, a higher quantity of the medicine can be maintained within a given region, allowing the drug to be distributed at a faster rate.

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[behealthy99]

Pan-coronavirus vaccines is our best bet to win this fight: How to grab them

New Post has been published on https://behealthy99.com/pan-coronavirus-vaccines-is-our-best-bet-to-win-this-fight-how-to-grab-them/

Pan-coronavirus vaccines is our best bet to win this fight: How to grab them

The world is breeding new variants so fast, it may not make sense to chase them one at a time. Global regulators don’t necessarily think it’s the right approach. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say omicron-specific vaccines might not be needed, and that public-health agencies around the world — not drug companies — should work together to decide the composition of the next vaccines.

A wiser strategy is one that many vaccine scientists are already working on: the development of pan-coronavirus vaccines, capable of quashing any variant that exists or might emerge.

It’s certainly possible that the omicron-specific vaccines that Pfizer and Moderna are working on will turn out to be useful, Anthony Fauci told me — at least for a while. But, he said, “we’ve got to be careful because you may be playing some sort of whack-a-mole approach as newer variants go.” In addition to advising President Joe Biden on Covid response, Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is funding various efforts to create pan-coronavirus vaccines.

Chances are good that a new Covid-19 variant is already lurking that might look nothing like omicron. Virus experts have been “humbled” by the range of mutations this coronavirus can produce, says Penny Moore, a virologist at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The changes in the spike protein — the target of our current vaccines — have jumped around from beta to delta to omicron, enough to suggest that an omicron-specific vaccine might be powerless against the next variant.

In a perfect world, the quickest way to end this variant chase would be to immediately vaccinate the entire world with the existing shots. Omicron has shown it can break through Pfizer and Moderna’s protection, but these vaccines still defend against severe disease, hospitalization and death. For now, countries with inadequate vaccine supplies are a breeding ground for new variants.

One smart way to fight back is to create and test pan-coronavirus vaccines — and lay out a plan to produce enough of these for all countries. But they can’t be created as fast as variant-specific vaccines can. Fauci estimates it could take many months or even, if we’re unlucky, years to perfect them. But given the probability that the world will be living with SARS-CoV-2 for a long time, it’s essential to try to build universal protection against any and all variants that might develop.

So what exactly is a pan-coronavirus vaccine? The term has become a catchall for both vaccines that could protect against any current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants and those that could also provide immunity against SARS, MERS and any other coronaviruses that might come along. Scientists have reason to be optimistic that either kind is possible. Design templates already exist for universal vaccines against flu and HIV. The trouble is, none of these designs has yet made it to the marketplace, and many have failed altogether.

Coronaviruses may be easier targets, however. Their built-in error-correcting mechanism causes them to mutate much more slowly than flu viruses or HIV do.

So scientists in academic and government labs are working with a specific design that has shown promise against the flu: a nanoparticle studded with pieces of the virus that are known to be important for eliciting a strong immune response.

Researchers at many labs — including the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the National Institutes of Health, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design and Northwestern University — are experimenting with various kinds of nanoparticles decorated with spike proteins taken from various SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The idea is that exposing the immune system to a few different spike proteins will enable it to mount a defense against any it might encounter. Last month, Walter Reed scientists published data showing that their pan-coronavirus vaccine caused nonhuman primates to produce neutralizing antibodies against not only SARS-CoV-2 but also SARS-CoV-1, the strain responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak. These researchers have already begun an early Phase 1 trial in humans to ensure it is safe and gauge the immune response it elicits.

Another experimental pan-coronavirus vaccine created by Pamela Bjorkman’s lab at CalTech has room for even more spike proteins than the Walter Reed one has. She’s preparing to begin a trial in the U.K.

Another way to create a pan-coronavirus vaccine is to target the parts of the virus that remain the same even as it mutates, perhaps a small region on the spike protein. But because so many of the virus’s mutations are on the spike, this may not be easy. Vir Biotechnology Inc., which makes the only antibody therapy still effective against omicron, is well on its way to identifying these so-called highly conserved areas on the virus, says Herbert “Skip” Virgin, Vir’s chief scientific officer. The hope is that a vaccine targeting these spots could offer several years of broad protection against coronaviruses.

“But discovering these vaccines will take time,” Fauci says. “It’s not going to be tomorrow.” In making the initial Covid vaccines, scientists were able to quickly build upon years of work to make the spike protein in the proper shape to show the human immune system. Doing that again for whatever area remains unchanged in the spike? “That could take a long time,” Fauci says.

Directing greater effort into the projects could move them along faster. In September, NIAID gave out $36.3 million in pan-coronavirus grants, and that’s a start. Getting big drug firms — and their vast research budgets — involved would also help. It’s not too soon for companies such as Pfizer and Moderna to turn their attention to pan-coronavirus vaccines.

  This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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[inkintheinternet]

The Booster Debate and those Variants (Corona Chronicle 9)

By Arjuwan Lakkdawala 

Ink in the Internet

Covid 19, the virus that apparently is refusing to go away. Three years on and governments are still sweating with masking people, restrictions, social distancing and vaccines. 

As a science communicator, author, and someone who has worked in newspapers and independent journalism for 15 years, I have never seen a virus shake up the world like Covid 19 and I think everybody should be seriously concerned and not let our guard down.

Around the world daily new infections are in the thousands.

Malaria, Polio, Dengue Fever, Ebola, HIV, to name just a few of the viruses humanity has battled in recent history. 

But never did scientists name so many strains and variants of the same virus to fight against. 

According to the science, viruses are supposed to mutate. But we have only been challenged by mutations in Covid 19.

Ask any scientists if Covid 19 is deadlier than any of the viruses mentioned above and they'd say no. Ask why the influenza didn't shut down countries though it too mutates, and the official claim is Covid 19 has variants of "concern." Unlike the influenza.

There are three categories for variants. As stated on the Hopkins Medicine site.

1. A variant of interest

2. A variant of concern

3. A variant of high consequence.

The WHO has classified Omicron as a variant of concern. It means the strain has increased infectiousness, likely to cause severe disease, and evade immune system response.

Fortunately according to the WHO there are currently no SARS-COV-2 variants in the third category, which is given to variants that current vaccines don't offer protection against.

Robert Bollinger, M.D. M.P.H. from John Hopkins says that it's not advantageous for the virus to mutate and become so deadly that people die quickly and it has little chance to spread. 

This quote might seem from a science fiction horror film but it's from an actual doctor based on science.

So does the virus have a mind? Is it alive or dead. 

Article in American Scientists explains that viruses are in a grey area between living and dead. Like opening a chemistry box, it has all the mechanism to replicate itself when it gets a living host.

This makes it difficult for scientists to decide if viruses are living parasitic organisms or biological machines that need living cells as fuel to become active.

Presently it's not just the variants and mutations that have scientists worried.

It's two things. Mutations and Re-Combinations. 

HIV, a notorious virus was the result of the Recombination of SIV (Simian Immunodeficiancy Virus) with another strain.

So we need to take Covid 19 mutations and the possibility of a potiantally deadlier virus emerging threat seriously.

There is no evidence so far that suggests any strain or re-combination of Covid 19 variants could result in HIV like disease.

But we have to be cautious and prevent high consequence variants from occurring.

Because we have seen this virus certainly knows no border. What happens in another country is everybody's problem when it comes to infectious viruses.

Vaccines, masks, and social distancing, is humanity's most effective defence against the variants.

Doctors Stuart Ray, and Robert Bollinger from JH say there is evidence that vaccince effectiveness decreases over time.

So the booster shot should renew protection from the variants.

The American CDC doesn't recommend taking pain killers before vaccines, as they don't know if it will effect how vaccines work.

[b2bordermanagement]

Omicron Likely Picked Up Genetic Material From Common Cold Virus: Study

New York The Omicron variant of the contagion that causes COVID-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a grain of inheritable material from another contagion- conceivably bone that causes the common cold-present in the same infected cells, according to experimenters. This inheritable sequence doesn't appear in any earlier performances of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, but is ubiquitous in numerous other contagions including those that beget the common deep freeze, and also in the mortal genome, experimenters said. By fitting this particular grain into itself, Omicron might be making itself look" further mortal,"which would help it shirk attack by the mortal vulnerable system, said Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts- grounded data analytics firm nference, who led the study https//osf.io/ f7txy posted on Thursday on the website OSF Preprints. This could mean the contagion transmits more fluently, while only causing mild or asymptomatic complaint. Scientists don't yet know whether Omicron is more contagious than other variants, whether it causes more severe complaint or whether it'll catch Delta as the most current variant. It may take several weeks to get answers to these questions. Cells in the lungs and in the gastrointestinal system can harbor SARS-CoV-2 and common-cold coronaviruses contemporaneously, according to earlier studies. Similarco-infection sets the scene for viral recombination, a process in which two different contagions in the same host cell interact while making clones of themselves, generating new clones that have some inheritable material from both"parents." This new mutation could have first passed in a person infected with both pathogens when a interpretation of SARS-CoV-2 picked up the inheritable sequence from the other contagion, Soundararajan and associates said in the study, which has not yet been peer- reviewed. The same inheritable sequence appears numerous times in one of the coronaviruses that causes snap in people- known as HCoV-229E-and in the mortal immunodeficiency contagion (HIV) that causes AIDS, Soundararajan said. South Africa, where Omicron was first linked, has the world's loftiest rate of HIV, which weakens the vulnerable system and increases a person's vulnerability to infections with common-cold contagions and other pathogens. In that part of the world, there are numerous people in whom the recombination that added this ubiquitous set of genes to Omicron might have passed, Soundararajan said. "We presumably missed numerous generations of recombinations"that passed over time and that led to the emergence of Omicron, Soundararajan added. Further exploration is demanded to confirm the origins of Omicron's mutations and their goods on function and transmissibility. There are contending suppositions that the rearmost variant might have spent some time evolving in an beast host. In the meantime, Soundararajan said, the new findings emphasize the significance of people getting the presently available COVID-19 vaccines. "You have to vaccinate to reduce the odds that other people, who are immunocompromised, will encounter the SARS-CoV-2 contagion,"Soundararajan said.

[pcdpharma19-blog]

India is Going to Become a Center for Covid-19 Antiviral Drugs

The drug controller issued emergency use authorization to pharmaceutical businesses in India to produce generic versions of molnupiravir.

After the drug controller issued emergency-use authorization to multiple pharmaceutical businesses in India to produce and commercialize generic versions of molnupiravir, India will become the world's largest hub for Covid-19 antiviral general medication production.

As Omicron infections develop in India, increased availability to molnupiravir will maintain hospitalizations and deaths to a manageable level.

Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Natco Pharma, Viatris, Hetero Drugs, and Mankind Pharma are among those who have received approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).

Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics developed Molnupiravir, the first ever oral antiviral medication for the treatment of severe individuals with mild to severe HIV infection. Covid-19.

Following the approval, many major pharmaceutical companies are planning to supply molnupiravir capsules in the upcoming days, with the remaining companies following the process.

As a result, India will become the world's largest producer of Covid-19 antiviral generic drugs. Molnupiravir's performance in the move-out phase III trial was promising, with a 50 % reduction in hospitalization in early-stage infections.

In India, the Covid-19 second wave peaked in April and May 2021, with daily average cases exceeding 4 lakh. Since then, caseloads have decreased dramatically, with the national total holding at just under 10,000 cases per day over the rest of the year.

However, the Omicron version, which is poised to supersede Delta as the prevalent variation, has caused an increase in daily Covid-19 cases in recent days.

According to the Union Health ministry, Covid-19 cases totaled 1,41,986 on January 8, 2022, with 3,071 of these cases verified as the Omicron variety.

Furthermore, India continues to fall short of its Covid-19 vaccination rollout target, with only 44.5 percent of the population having received the vaccine. As a result, given the slow vaccination rate and recent spike in Covid-19 cases, generic versions of molnupiravir may be able to dramatically lower.

Generic molnupiravir would improve access in India as well as other low- and middle-income nations (LMICs) while also removing present supply chain barriers.

In the United States, a 5 day treatment duration with molnupiravir costs roughly USD 712. (Rs 52,909). For a five-day course, generic versions of the medicine will costing between USD 18.79 (about Rs 1,400) and USD 21.48 (around Rs 1,600), which is much less.

We estimate molnupiravir generic versions to greatly expand availability in India as well as other LMICs after government approval because to their low cost.

Furthermore, as compared to Covid-19 intravenous antivirals like casirivimab/imdevimab or remdesivir, these oral antiviral medications will result in lower transport and distribution costs.

Oral medications do not require the use of glass vials because they are firm and compact, and the tablets can be closely packed without risk of breaking.

Similarly, a higher quantity of the medicine can be maintained within a given region, allowing the drug to be distributed at a faster rate.

Tag:-

Molnupiravir Capsules 200mg,

Molnupiravir available in India,

Molnupiravir manufacturers in India,

Molnupiravir capsules 200 mg price in India,

Molnova Capsules,

Molnova Capsule Manufacturer,

Molnova Capsule Supplier