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The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford (UK) recently published interim data on the third phase of testing for their own coronavirus vaccine, revealing that the drug has an average effectiveness of 70%. . Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna have previously reported similar, even better, effects than Oxford. At 95%, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appear to be better suited to protect the injected person against coronavirus infection than the Oxford drug. However, Oxford products have two important advantages over other medications.
First, they are cheaper to mass-produce and will be significantly more affordable when purchased on a large scale for governments. Second, Oxford medicine can also survive normal refrigerator temperatures, which means it can be transported and distributed more easily than others. But, in an unexpected turn of events, it appears that the Oxford vaccine could be 90% effective. And all thanks to a “sudden mistake” made by the researchers who participated in the inoculation trial, when it showed really promising results.
Specifically, an experimental group from Oxford showed that they were 90% effective. They consisted of a group of about 3,000 people who received two doses of the drug, as did the other volunteers. However, what is different is the concentration of those injections. While the other experimental groups received both full injections within a few weeks of each other, this group of 3,000 received only half the dose at first, followed by a full dose followed by a few weeks.
“The reason we administered half the dose was by accident,” Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceutical research and development at AstraZeneca, said.
When the researchers delivered the vaccine in late April, they noticed milder-than-expected side effects, such as fatigue, headache, or pain in the arms. Therefore, the scientists checked and found that the dose of the vaccine had been reduced by half.
But instead of resuming the trial, the researchers decided to go ahead and give the full booster dose four weeks later at the scheduled time. As a result, this treatment regimen is up to 90% effective. According to provisional data, the groups that had received two doses four weeks apart were only 62 percent effective.
The scientists cannot explain the surprising difference between the two regimens, but they plan to do more research on the problem and see if the immune response in the above group of 3,000 people is satisfactory. However, it was clear that two different regimens triggered different immune responses in the volunteers.
“Maybe by injecting a small amount of vaccine to start and then a large one, that’s a better way to activate the immune system and give us the strongest immune response and effect. Most of the fruit.” Said Oxford University professor Sarah Gilbert.
“What we do not know at the moment is whether this difference is due to the quality or quantity of the immune response. And that is what we are going to analyze in the coming weeks.” Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, added.
Under the plan, the vaccine must be approved by regulators before it can be widely used. The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has signed contracts for 3 billion doses of vaccine. It is not clear which immunization regimen the general public will use once the vaccine is approved. The 3,000-person pool limited to the above is only a small part of the experiment. Oxford will have to give results to at least 30,000 volunteers to get US approval.
