{"id":5306,"date":"2022-08-17T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=5306"},"modified":"2022-08-17T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T06:00:00","slug":"what-exactly-is-paxlovid-mouth-and-how-do-you-get-rid-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=5306","title":{"rendered":"What, Exactly, Is \u2018Paxlovid Mouth\u2019 and How Do You Get Rid of It?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Covid-19 antiviral drug can leave a foul taste. The afflicted are scouring for remedies online.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Authors:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/news\/author\/alex-janin\">Alex Janin<\/a>  Aug. 16, 2022 Wall Street Journal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeanette Witten recently rummaged through her pantry for Red Hots, the cinnamon-flavored candy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 56-year-old in Montclair, N.J., was looking for a reprieve from a persistent residual taste\u2014\u201clike your mouth is just clenched around a grapefruit rind\u201d\u2014that came after she took&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/paxlovid-becomes-household-name-for-covid-19-patients-11653908400?mod=article_inline\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paxlovid, Pfizer\u2019s antiviral drug<\/a>&nbsp;to treat Covid-19.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/market-data\/quotes\/PFE\">Pfizer<\/a>&nbsp;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\u2019 dysgeusia symptoms were mild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A weekly look at our most colorful, thought-provoking and original feature stories on the business of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it\u2019s still hard for many patients to stomach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Covid-19 antiviral drug can leave a foul taste. The afflicted are scouring for remedies online. Authors:&nbsp;Alex Janin Aug. 16, 2022 Wall Street Journal Jeanette Witten recently rummaged through her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[978,790,910,567,568],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adverse-event-reporting","category-dysgeusia","category-paxlovid","category-taste-smell","category-taste-smell-disturbance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}