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General news for Sunday February 28, 2021
Source: GNA
2021-02-28
Pyramax is also being tested in South Africa, Kenya and Burkina Faso to select efficacy data in Africa
The Antimalarial Pyramax (Artesunate-Pyronaridine), a fixed-dose combination drug for the treatment of malaria, has been approved for clinical trials on Covid-19 in South Korea.
In addition, it is tried in South Africa, Kenya and Burkina Faso to select efficacy data from Africa.
The main objective of the study, which is being led by the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is to compare and assess the efficacy and safety of Pyramax in the treatment of patients infected with the coronavirus, in particular an infection with mild to moderate covid-19 and viral nasal swab clearance) on day 7.
Despite various drug development efforts, only vaccines led by AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and more recently Sputnik V have been approved for the management of COVID-19.
COVID-19 drug treatment efforts are still ongoing. Despite this, several drug molecules, including drugs already approved for other diseases, are emerging as offering benefits for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.
Between October 2020 and to date, Sars-CoV-2 has manifested in three different variants of the original virus for which certain vaccines were produced.
These mutations include B.1.1351 (501Y.V2) from South Africa, 501Y.V3 from Brazil and B.1.1.7 (501Y.V1) from the United Kingdom.
Due to the more transmissible nature of the N501Y mutation familiar to all these variants from South Africa, Brazil and the UK, the projected impact of vaccines needs to be revised as the highly transmissible variants lead to exponential growth in the number. infections.
This calls for consideration of other drug development pathways besides vaccines.
Certain drug molecules such as Pyronaridine, synthesized in 1970 at the Institute of Chinese Parasitic Diseases, have been used in China for more than 30 years for the treatment of malaria.
Pyronaridin has been approved as an orphan drug for the management of Ebola in different parts of the world and shows promise in the fight against COVID-19 due to its antiviral properties.
In vitro studies comparing pyronaridine, artesunate and hydroxychloroquine to SARS-COV-2 show that pyronaridine artesunate is more potent than hydroxychloroquine in the human lung epithelial cell line.
Artesunate, on the other hand, has similar antiviral properties and offers anti-inflammatory effects that suggest its potential usefulness in the treatment of COVID-19. The estimated completion date for the study is September 30, 2021.
In 2017, Pyramax, an oral drug produced as a result of a collaboration between Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the University of Iowa and Shin Poong Pharm, a South Korean pharmaceutical company specializing in neglected tropical diseases, has been included in the Pediatric and Adult Essentials program. WHO drug lists for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria.
To improve accessibility in low- and middle-income countries, the Global Fund has also included Pyramax in its list of medicines.
Internationally, Pyramax is registered in twenty-six high malaria burden countries and locally registered by the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority since March 2020 for the management of uncomplicated malaria.
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