Some Covid patients develop resistance to Sotrovimab treatment
As treatments continue to be developed for patients with COVID-19, some scientists have found that one in particular may cause the virus to mutate so that it becomes harder to treat.
A team of Australian researchers analysed samples from the first 100 people to be treated with Sotrovimab - an increasingly popular treatment that targets the Omicron variant and prevents severe COVID-19 symptoms - only to make some interesting findings.
They took samples from the patients before and after they were treated with Sotrovimab and sequenced the genome of the virus in each sample.
In four of the patients, the team found that the virus had mutated in ways that made it more resistant to treatment within 13 days of treatment.
“We discovered that the virus that causes COVID-19 can develop mutations within the patient several days after Sotrovimab treatment, which reduces the effectiveness of this treatment by greater than 100-fold,” Dr Rebecca Rockett, a Sydney researcher in infectious disease and co-author of the study, said.
This research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to show the mutations in clinical models, with previous research finding the mutations developed in animal models and when growing the virus in a lab setting.
With this finding, the researchers are calling for the use of Sotrovimab to be monitored to prevent treatment-resistant versions of the virus from spreading in the community.
“Resistant virus samples could be readily grown in the laboratory, a marker that individuals who develop resistance may transmit the resistance virus to others,” said Professor Vitali Sintchenko, the study’s senior author and a fellow researcher in infectious disease.
“(Sotrovimab) is the only one (treatment) we have evidence against so far, but we need to be more on the front foot in terms of efficacy,” Dr Rockett told 7News.
“I don’t think the infrastructure is in place to capture the resistance. We need better surveillance.”
Since the research was published, GSK, the manufacturer of Sotrovimab, has confirmed that the study’s findings were consistent with the company’s large clinical studies.
“Resistance is also seen in studies for other COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies and oral treatments, and relates to how the immune system interacts with the virus,” a spokesperson said, per 7News.com.au.
“This report does not change the positive benefit-risk of sotrovimab for use in the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in patients at high risk of progression.”
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