The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: PeteS in CA on July 27, 2020, 07:18:39 pm
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Antiviral method against herpes paves the way for combatting incurable viral infections
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-antiviral-method-herpes-paves-combatting.html (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-antiviral-method-herpes-paves-combatting.html)
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a new method to treat human herpes viruses. The new broad-spectrum method targets physical properties in the genome of the virus rather than viral proteins, which have previously been targeted. The treatment consists of new molecules that penetrate the protein shell of the virus and prevent genes from leaving the virus to infect the cell. It does not lead to resistance and acts independently of mutations in the genome of the virus. The results are published in the journal PLOS Pathogenes.
Herpes virus infections are lifelong, with latency periods between recurring reactivations, making treatment difficult. The major challenge lies in the fact that all existing antiviral drugs to treat herpes viruses lead to rapid development of resistance in patients with compromised immune systems where the need for herpes treatment is the greatest (e.g. newborn children, patients with HIV, cancer or who have undergone organ transplantation).
While the STD variety of herpes has gotten plenty of lurid media attention, chickenpox is caused by a variety of the herpes virus, and could break out as shingles decades after having had chickenpox. So this could benefit a lot of people. And if the technique can be extended to other virus families ...