In a study published in Nature on May 16, a research team led by University of Wisconsin–Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues in Japan show that the BA.2 subvariant of omicron is similar to BA.1 in both the ...
18 hours ago
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Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease's recent spread in Europe and North America.
May 20, 2022
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Repurposed drugs may have a speedier path to clinical use because they have already been shown to be safe in people. A study publishing May 19 in the open access journal PLOS Pathogens by Sandrine Belouzard and Jean Dubuisson ...
May 19, 2022
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North Korea on Tuesday reported another large jump in illnesses believed to be COVID-19 and encouraged good health habits, as a mass outbreak spreads through its unvaccinated population and military officers were deployed ...
May 17, 2022
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Viruses in the herpesvirus family are leading causes of birth defects, blindness, and failed organ transplants worldwide. Antiviral drugs can combat these viruses, but patients often develop resistance to the drugs—rendering ...
May 12, 2022
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Unlike other SARS-CoV-2 variants, the delta variant can attach to copies of itself, forming larger aggregations, or clumps, of viral particles, suggests a study by scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The researchers ...
May 11, 2022
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No one's exactly sure what causes Bell's palsy, a condition that causes sudden facial weakness on one side of the face. But the symptoms are unmistakable. Once the weakness, or paralysis, sets in—usually on one side of ...
May 09, 2022
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An antiviral drug used to treat high-risk COVID-19 patients may also benefit patients with long COVID, researchers say.
May 06, 2022
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The World Health Organization said Friday it "strongly recommended" Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral pill Paxlovid for patients with milder forms of the disease who were still at a high risk of hospitalization.
Apr 21, 2022
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While 2021 proved to be a record-breaking year for organ donation in the U.S., many people are still hesitant to register to become a donor. Nationwide, only about 48% of people are registered to be organ donors, according ...
Apr 06, 2022
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Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections. Like antibiotics for bacteria, specific antivirals are used for specific viruses. Unlike antibiotics, antiviral drugs do not destroy their target pathogen but inhibit their development.
Antiviral drugs are one class of antimicrobials, a larger group which also includes antibiotic, antifungal and antiparasitic drugs. They are relatively harmless to the host, and therefore can be used to treat infections. They should be distinguished from viricides, which are not medication but destroy virus particles outside the body.
Most of the antivirals now available are designed to help deal with HIV, herpes viruses (best known for causing cold sores and genital herpes, but actually causing a wide range of diseases), the hepatitis B and C viruses, which can cause liver cancer, and influenza A and B viruses. Researchers are working to extend the range of antivirals to other families of pathogens.
Designing safe and effective antiviral drugs is difficult, because viruses use the host's cells to replicate. This makes it difficult to find targets for the drug that would interfere with the virus without harming the host organism's cells.
The emergence of antivirals is the product of a greatly expanded knowledge of the genetic and molecular function of organisms, allowing biomedical researchers to understand the structure and function of viruses, major advances in the techniques for finding new drugs, and the intense pressure placed on the medical profession to deal with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of the deadly acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic.
Almost all anti-microbials, including anti-virals, are subject to drug resistance as the pathogens mutate over time, becoming less susceptible to the treatment. For instance, a recent study published in Nature Biotechnology emphasized the urgent need for augmentation of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) stockpiles with additional antiviral drugs including zanamivir (Relenza) based on an evaluation of the performance of these drugs in the scenario that the 2009 H1N1 'Swine Flu' neuraminidase (NA) were to acquire the tamiflu-resistance (His274Tyr) mutation which is currently wide-spread in seasonal H1N1 strains.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
