The Covid-19 antiviral drug can leave a foul taste. The afflicted are scouring for remedies online.

Authors: Alex Janin Aug. 16, 2022 Wall Street Journal

Jeanette Witten recently rummaged through her pantry for Red Hots, the cinnamon-flavored candy.

The 56-year-old in Montclair, N.J., was looking for a reprieve from a persistent residual taste—“like your mouth is just clenched around a grapefruit rind”—that came after she took Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral drug to treat Covid-19. 

Ms. Witten is one of many people who have scouted remedies for what is informally known as Paxlovid mouth, a taste that can linger for as long as you take the drug. Patients who have taken Paxlovid have described it as sun-baked trash-bag liquid, a mouthful of dirty pennies and rotten soymilk. They have tried to erase the taste with salves from cinnamon to milk to pineapple. They are also trading strategies online. 

A Pfizer spokesperson acknowledged the side effect, called dysgeusia, and pointed to a study that found the symptom occurred 5.6% of the time people took the drug. The study was funded by Pfizer and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The company said most patients’ dysgeusia symptoms were mild.

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The culprit is likely ritonavir, a part of the drug that is used to boost levels of antiviral medicines, doctors say. Ritonavir has a known association with dysgeusia. It is a small price to pay given the nearly 90% reduction in hospitalization and death among those at risk for severe disease from Covid-19, say doctors and people who have taken the medication. 

But it’s still hard for many patients to stomach.