News tagged with antiviral drugs
Stress in cells activates hepatitis viruses
People who have received a donor organ need lifelong immunosuppressant drugs to keep their immune system from attacking the foreign tissue. However, with a suppressed immune system, many infectious agents ...
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NIAID scientists consider 200 years of infectious diseases
Unpredictable, ever-changing and with potentially far-reaching effects on the fates of nations, infectious diseases are compelling actors in the drama of human history, note scientists from the National Institute of Allergy ...
Feb 02, 2012 |
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Pharma's niche focus spurs US aid for antibiotics
(AP) -- The pharmaceutical industry won approval to market a record number of new drugs for rare diseases last year, as a combination of scientific innovation and business opportunity spurred new treatments for diseases ...
Medicine & Health / Medications
Jan 25, 2012 |
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Continuing uncertainties surround anti-influenza drug
Incomplete availability of data has hampered a thorough assessment of the evidence for using the anti-influenza drug oseltamivir, a Cochrane Review has found. However, after piecing together information from over 16,000 pages ...
Medicine & Health / Medications
Jan 18, 2012 |
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Statins may reduce mortality in patients hospitalized with influenza
The two main ways to prevent and control influenza today are annual immunization and antiviral drugs. A team of investigators has found that statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs, may offer an additional treatment to complement ...
Dec 14, 2011 |
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Scientists find potential Achilles' heel on Lassa fever and related viruses
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have determined the atomic structure of a protein that the Lassa fever virus uses to make copies of itself within infected cells. The structural data reveal an ...
Nov 15, 2011 |
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Antiviral drugs may slow Alzheimer's progression
Antiviral drugs used to target the herpes virus could be effective at slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a new study shows.
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Oct 17, 2011 |
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Hepatitis C patients likely to falter in adherence to treatment regimen over time
Patients being treated for chronic hepatitis C become less likely to take their medications over time, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Since the study also ...
Sep 29, 2011 |
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Treatment of common virus can reduce tumour growth
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to inhibit the growth of brain tumours by treating the common Cytomegalovirus (CMV). The virus, which is found in a wide ...
Sep 27, 2011 |
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Searchers map the global spread of drug-resistant influenza
In the new movie "Contagion," fictional health experts scramble to get ahead of a flu-like pandemic as a drug-resistant virus quickly spreads, killing millions of people within days after they contract the illness.
Sep 14, 2011 |
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Tracking a moving target
The influenza pandemic that began in Mexico in April 2009 rapidly spread throughout the world and arrived in Japan one month later. Now, a research team led by Toshihisa Ishikawa at the RIKEN Omics Science ...
Jul 15, 2011 |
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Philippines warns against geckos as AIDS treatment
(AP) -- The Philippines warned Friday against using geckos to treat AIDS and impotence, saying the folkloric practice in parts of Asia may put patients at risk.
Medicine & Health / HIV & AIDS
Jul 15, 2011 |
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Study points to new means of overcoming antiviral resistance in influenza
UC Irvine researchers have found a new approach to the creation of customized therapies for virulent flu strains that resist current antiviral drugs.
Jul 12, 2011 |
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Universal flu vaccine a step closer thanks to discovery of natural antibody
Annually changing flu vaccines with their hit-and-miss effectiveness may soon give way to a single, near-universal flu vaccine, according to a new report from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the Dutch biopharmaceutical ...
Jul 07, 2011 |
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Understanding the link between HIV and dementia
(Medical Xpress) -- HIV can hide out in the brain, protected from the immune system and antiviral drugs, Dr. Lachlan Gray and his colleagues at Monash University and the Burnet Institute have found.
Medicine & Health / HIV & AIDS
Jun 29, 2011 |
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Antiviral drug
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.
For more information about Antiviral drug, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
