March 21 (UPI) —<\/span> AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 antibody combination Evusheld is effective against the highly contagious Omicron BA.1 and BA.1.1 variants of COVID-19, the company said Monday.<\/p>\n Preclinical authentic live virus data from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis demonstrated AstraZeneca’s Evusheld drug also remains effective against the more recent BA.2 subvariant, the British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company said in a news release.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n The drug is a combination of two long-acting antibodies derived from B-cells donated by patients recovering from COVID-19.<\/p>\n “These important data show that Evusheld reduced viral burden and limited inflammation caused by Omicron,” AstraZeneca Vice President John Perez in a statement. “The findings further support Evusheld as a potential important option to help protect vulnerable patients such as the immunocompromised who could face poor outcomes if they were to become infected with COVID-19.”\n<\/p>\n The study conducted on mice demonstrated Evusheld significantly reduced the viral burden and limited inflammation in the lungs for all three sub-variants, the company said.<\/p>\n “These new in vivo mouse model data confirm previous in vitro neutralization activity results for Evusheld against Omicron,” Michael Diamond, a professor of microbiology, pathology and immunology at Washington University, said in the statement. “The findings demonstrate that Evusheld was effective at protecting against infection in the lungs, a critical disease site for severe COVID-19, across all Omicron subvariants tested.”\n<\/p>\n In December, Evusheld was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Emergency Use Authorization in the United States.\n<\/p>\n In February, the FDA revised the emergency use authorization for Evusheld, changing its initial dose for the authorized use as a prevention against COVID-19 in certain cases.<\/p>\n Evusheld is also approved as a treatment for COVID-19 in several other countries.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AstraZeneca said Monday, new research from the Washington University’s School of Medicine shows the company’s\u00a0antibody combination is effective against the highly contagious Omicron BA.1 and BA.1.1 COVID-19 variants. File Photo by Drago Prvulovic\/EFE-EPA March 21 (UPI) — AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 antibody combination Evusheld is effective against the highly contagious Omicron BA.1 and BA.1.1 variants of COVID-19, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1029627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[987,261,2385,989,2348,3164],"class_list":["post-1029625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-astrazeneca","tag-covid19","tag-effective","tag-omicron","tag-treatment","tag-variant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"AstraZeneca](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/AstraZeneca-treatment-effective-against-Omicron-COVID-19-variant.jpg\" "\\"AstraZeneca")
\n<\/div>\nAstraZeneca said Monday, new research from the Washington University’s School of Medicine shows the company’s\u00a0antibody combination is effective against the highly contagious Omicron BA.1 and BA.1.1 COVID-19 variants. File Photo by Drago Prvulovic\/EFE-EPA<\/p>\n