Sotrovimab contains monoclonal antibodies and can be used in patients over 12 years of age who are at risk of acute COVID-19 and death due to infection. These are the guidelines of the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which have authorized sotrovimab therapy.

People withCOVID-19coursemild or moderateshould have special hopes for the drug, but their condition may worsen .Sotrovimabwill not be used in people who have already been in hospital or use oxygen therapy. This is because - according toFDA- giving this drug to a hospitalized or oxygen-treated person mayworsen their results.

Zclinical trials of the drugcited by the FDA found that controls that tookplacebodied or were left hospitalized 7 percent of the respondents. However, in the group that received sotrovimab, this percentage was 1%.

Importantly, sotrovimab has been shown to be effective in people infected with various variants of the coronavirus, including: "British", "South African", "Brazilian" and "Indian".

Potential side effectsof drug use are also known. These include diarrhea, rash, and anaphylactic shock.

Doktor Dziecitkowski: This is not a panacea for COVID-19

Virologist Dr. Tomasz Dzieśćtkowski in an interview with "Poradnik Zdrowie" referred to the enthusiastic reports on the new drug in the following words:

Monoclonal antibodies, like the plasma of convalescents, inactivate viruses that are just emerging and multiplying. If there are already many virions, it is too late to use them. Therefore, therapy with them makes sense only in the early stages of the disease, with its mild or moderate course.

Such antibodies have already been used in COVID-19 therapy. For example, the American company Regeneron has created a mixture of two such antibodies and given it as part of therapy to Donald Trump, among others. There is even a drug based on such antibodies that has been discontinued because some of the coronavirus protein has changed and is no longer effective.

It must therefore be emphasized that this is not a breakthrough, because it is a new drug, such asis sotrovimab, it will almost certainly be used on a small scale and only in certain patients. By no means can it be argued that we have apanacea for COVID-19 . Therapy with monoclonal antibodies is very expensive, as in the case of autoimmune diseases orcancer , but in early Maythe European Medicines Agency (EMA)has already started accelerated evaluation of sotrovimab by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology.

Read also:

  • Is it worth doing an antibody test after vaccination? Explains the expert
  • Coronavirus in Poland and in the world. Current data, statistics. UPDATE 5/27/2021

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