There is an unusual and surprising connection between the coronavirus which is labelled Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2, and FIP. Both are scary illnesses or can be. They can both kill to devastating effect.
They are both coronaviruses but that is not the connection I want to write about. There is a similarity in the alternative name for FIP, which is FCoV.
So far the only drug that has been demonstrated to be effective in treating Covid-19 by reducing the recovery time from 14 to 11 days is remdesivir. Currently it has not been proven to reduce the death rate.
Remdesivir is very similar to a drug which has proved effective in treating FIP and that drug is called GS-441524. I wrote about it in August 2019 so I won’t go over it here. The reports tell me that it is surprisingly effective.
Both GS-441524 and remdesivir were invented and patented by Gilead. Gilead did not seek to obtain a license from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for GS-441524 because of its similarity to remdesivir. They did not want to interfere with the FDA’s approval of remdesivir. I guess this is an example of humans being more important than animals.
Both remdesivir and GS-441524 work in the same way to inhibit viruses. To put it another way, they block virus replication. GS-441524 has not been tested as a treatment for Covid-19 in humans.
The world expert of FIP, Niels Pedersen, 76, is responsible for GS-441524. The downside is that the drug is mind-blowingly expensive at up to $10,000 for a 12 week course. It can be bought on the black market where it is still very expensive. And it is technically illegal to use it on cats because it is unlicensed.
You wouldn’t normally link FIP and Covid-19 but they are similar and the chemical compositions of the drugs that treats them are very similar.
SOME FIP ARTICLES:
