Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Two COVID-19 antibody treatments are no longer recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), on the grounds that Omicron and the latest variants have likely rendered them obsolete. The two treatments – which are designed to work by binding to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 to neutralize the virus’s ability to infect cells – were some of the first drugs developed early in the pandemic. The virus has since evolved, and growing evidence from laboratory trials suggests that the two treatments – sotrovimab as well as casirivimab-imdevimab – have limited clinical activity against the latest iterations of the virus. As a result, they have also fallen out of favor with the US health regulator. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up On Thursday, WHO experts said they strongly advise against the use of the two treatments in patients with COVID-19, reversing earlier conditional recommendations that endorsed them, as part of a series of recommendations published in the British Medical Journal. GSK ( GSK.L ) and Vir Biotechnology ( VIR.O ) partner sotrovimab — which has generated billions in sales and became one of the top sellers in the British drug industry last year — was pulled from the U.S. market by the Food and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ) in April. read more Since the United States had begun questioning the clinical effectiveness of sotrovimab over Omicron as early as February, the WHO’s realization is coming a bit late, said Penny Ward, visiting professor of pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London. “Now that the WHO has issued this recommendation, it will be interesting to see how many other countries align with it,” he said. Regeneron and partner Roche’s ( ROG.S ) antibody cocktail casirivimab-imdevimab also generated billions in sales and was one of the U.S. drug industry’s top sellers last year. In January, the FDA revised its stance on the treatment, limiting its use to a smaller group of patients, citing its reduced potency compared to the Omicron variant. Both treatments continue to be recommended for use by the European Medicines Regulatory Authority. Another COVID treatment that emerged early in the pandemic was Gilead’s ( GILD.O ) antiviral remdesivir. The WHO extended its conditional recommendation for the drug, advising that it can be used in patients with severe COVID as well as non-severe COVID patients with the highest risk of hospitalization. There are some existing treatments for COVID that remain useful in fighting the virus and others in development that are expected to benefit patients as well. (This story corrects to explain that WHO has conditionally expanded the use of remdesivir to include patients with severe COVID in paragraph 11) Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Reporting by Natalie Grover in London. Editing by Elaine Hardcastle Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
