New Antiviral May Cure Common Cold 246
Max Karpiak writes "CNN is reporting on a new antiviral which may cure the common cold as well as many other viral infections. What's especially cool is the way this drug was created: it was designed specifically to counter viruses, not just discovered in a hit-or-miss fashon. Geeks designing molecules to attack viruses? Awesome!" Neat stuff. So, what other "fantastic" science applications are on the verge of actually entering the market?
Re:Truly a good thing? (Sigh!) (Score:1)
Not this old canard. Longer lifespans do not appreciably increase the worlds population. Learn some simple math about exponential growth.
All the deathrate does is increase the constant factor of the equation. Most people do not keep having children as they live longer. Even if everyone died as soon as their children turned 15, but they had 4 children, the population would continue to growth exponentially. The proper thing to do is to reduce birth rates by exporting education and capitalism everywhere.
This naive viewpoint that living longer hurts the ecosystem or increases population pressure has been debunked over and over by cryonics advocates, and other anti-aging groups.
I just wish the fucking anti-technology green leftist wackos (especially the damn paranoid "oh no, beef and gm foods will kill us, we can't take *ANY* risk") would stop their campaign of LUDDITE fear.
fuckers. They will block life saving technology for a stupid ecocentrist agenda.
Me, I hope I can live 200 years and get off this fucking rock to escape the bastards.
Re:How about... (Score:1)
My view on death & more (Score:1)
There is yet another factor to consider, herd immunity. If enough people in a population are resistant to a disease, that disease cannot propagate effectively. In effect, the whole population gains immunity. I think 70% is the estimated fraction of immunization necessary for herd immunity with many diseases. Prophylaxis is not so one sided. Drugs have to get much better, to the effectiveness of vaccines, before it will see like a convincingly good idea. The benefits of herd immunity may outweigh the risks of super resistant mutants. Widespread treatment of nuisance disease potentially shields the people with weak immune systems by reducing the number of contagious people. I do not know beyond doubt which decision is better. I doubt anyone does. In any case, I do not think the answer is at all obvious.
I believe human life is a valuable, precious thing. We should not take actions that are going to kill people. Realistically, we do it anyway. Automobiles seem like a good example to me. Effectively, we kill one another just so we can get somewhere fast. Electricity kills people. It also lets us flip switches and argue about killing people. Your example of the student speaking out against the old argument is good, but it doesn't make the problem vanish. The flu vaccine kills people, and the flu kills people. We get to choose whether to take the vaccine. Both choices hold the possibility of death. Whether or not we make utilitarian calculations, the possible consequences are there. Even something like a cold can kill people when it allows a secondary infection to take hold. Even drugs made to avoid inconvenience, like ones to treat common colds, often have the potential to save lives and the potential to kill people. It should never be strictly a numbers game. However, it is an unavoidable problem in many cases, and we can try to make decisions using the numbers.
As for driving to exinction, it's the only way I know to prevent a species from evolving. After a species is gone, however, other organisms eat its food. I'm not trying to excuse biological extermination. I'm not for "give me convenience or give me death." I'm simply trying to argue that we will cope with microbial disease for as long as we are good food. Since humans are big repositories of nutrients, chances are really good that things are going to keep trying to eat us. I think there is a different,--Viruses don't eat.--but analogous--Viruses have hosts.--situation with viruses. Maybe we'll get really, really good at coping. I hope so.
For the record, I'm pretty new to this biology stuff. My college background is in physics. I have had a few undergraduate level biology courses, including micro this past fall. I learned that material well, but the course was only introductory. I am trying to become a research physician.
"Would you prefer death
is to ought (I'm still watching this thread.) (Score:1)
Your position and what you think my position is are unclear to me. You seem to be advocating better public health. Specifically, I think you demand that epidemiology and evolution, not just effectiveness and toxicity/side effects, be considered in the drug approval and prescription process. I agree. I think I'm less fervent than you. I'm not quite sure which approaches you think are best and what you see as the errors of my reasoning.
We have to deal with these problems within the framework we are given. That framework is really messed up. I don't think that something should be because it already is. I do think that what is is going to be with us for a while, even in the face of good arguments and good evidence. Powerful forces are at work. In a world of bad policies, we have to do what we can to make better policies and, in the meantime, deal with the current policies. The NIH, CDC and similar organizations seem to have many brilliant, cautious, moral scientists. They only can suggest policies. As an American, I am obsessed with liberty (not that the USA is close to as free as most think). Stupidity and wrong must be allowed.
The automobile has its upside. Life expectancy has risen. Automobiles do not directly promote health; they hurt it. They do facilitate technology. We can distribute medicines. People can go to universities and become researchers. People can get to hospitals and doctor's offices. Food can be transported. All of these good things could happen without people driving as much as they do. Walking and public transportation could eliminate many of the risks without losing many benefits. Every societal phenomenon I can consider has an upside and a downside.
Intellectual property is the real problem. Drug companies, now often called "biotech," are financial monsters. I heard Dr. Ruth Hubbard speak about a year ago. She was the first tenured woman biology professor at Harvard, and now she's a speaker, writer and activist for biological issues, especially feminist ones. She discussed a company that is genetically profiling Iceland. When the job is done, the company will own the data. Drug research and development have long been shaky ground. As we get better at them, their problems will loom larger. Now companies own and patent organisms. At some point, I hope people, through the governments of the world, will put public health before profit and decommercialize biotechnology, especially healthcare. She pointed out major financial problems of public health. These miracle drugs are nice for us Westerners and Far Easterners. 1% of us die from infections. Circulatory disease and cancer are our major causes of death. 46% of the undeveloped world die from infections. New drugs make more money that older, effective drugs sold at lower cost. Third worlders are short on cash. (The numbers came from my Brock Biology of Microorganisms.)
ok. a few changes. (Score:1)
I don't think we're there yet on combating resistance mutations. I feel that we're going to get much better in the near future, maybe very good within 25 years. Evolution is very old, though. As far as I can tell, there will always be risks from infections and risks from their treatments. It is sad that these biotech companies pick an area based solely on financial potential. We are inviting danger. The danger arises from selfishness and greedy doctors. People want to feel better now. Too many doctors cave. Public health takes a back seat to personal health.
I'm less a believer in the doom of drug resistance. Drug resistance is bad, yes, but the treatment of apparently trivial disease can have great benefits. One argument is that we are going to create supermutants that will kill people. Another argument is that we already suffer. These diseases already kill people. A regular bug can look like a supermutant when there are no effective treatments. The mutants aren't going to put us anywhere new; they'll just return us to where we were, to a time of untreatable influenza (or whatever). The Golden Mean. We should not spew medicines out so much that we create mdr bugs that will kill pepole. We should not tell people they have to suffer and even die because we don't want to create mdr bugs. People do die from trivial disease. Having thousands of untreated contagious people everywhere has its own risks. We have to balance the tradeoffs. Of course, we don't understand quite what the tradeoffs are. It's tricky.
Thought: How will resistance affect virulence? If a drug becomes ineffective, will the new resistant bugs--I'll assume viruses.--be any worse than the virus strains before we had the drug? I would guess that the answer rests with the drug's mechanism. Imagine that the drug is a competitive inhibitor that closely imitates a cell receptor. It would be very hard for the virus to develop resistance without losing virulence. Imagine that the drug imitates some immune response. A resistance mutation could spell disaster. The new virus strain would be more resistant to the drug and to our immune response. At this time, we might not be smart enough to think clearly about this question.
When Dr. Hubbard was here, I asked whether she advocated a socialized health care system. As I expected, she said yes and contrasted us with nearly every other developed country on earth. IIRC, I then asked about how we are supposed to implement one, and she said something vague about legislation. I have little faith in public opinion, legislative integrity and healthcare company ethics. While she has good ideas and so do you, you both are living in fantasies from my perspective. Intolerant idealism does not solve problems. A perceived solution that has no hope of ever being implemented is not a solution. Take the Clinton healthcare initiative. His ideas may have been terrible. Maybe they were good. I do not know. I just know that he got nowhere with them and that people were in an uproar. Knowing what human forces we are up against is as much a part of the battle as knowing what disease forces we face.
Sidenote: When I tried to do a little (and very light) web research on these new antiviral drugs, I came across a NASA page [nasa.gov]. They grew neuraminidase protein crystals in microgravity. I guess they couldn't get good crystals on earth for x-ray crystallography.
I saw the movie Awakenings, I think. I don't know anything about the epidemic. I would write that I'll look into it. I'm sure it's interesting. Honestly, I probably won't look into it.
Europeans are idiots. So are Americans, but it's a different kind of idiocy. I used to think Europe was great until I started meeting Europeans. They were generally more aware than Americans in historical and cultural terms. They also tended to be very dogmatic and critical. They never seemed much different in critical thinking and debating abilities, just more offensive and rude.
My eyelids are getting heavy. I'm done writing for tonight.
Assumption (Score:1)
As for a change in genome size, your reasoning seems good to me. A smaller genome that can do the job has its advantages.
The reasoning is not perfect. We do see some viruses that are larger than others. It appears that the size of the largest genome is bigger now than it was a few billion years ago. As you note, the balance of evolutionary factors is a delicate one. Nature always has its surprises.
Organisms are numerous. (Score:1)
Allow me to quote myself. "Even if they drive one species to extinction, another one can take its place." I recognize that extinction is always a possibility. I wrote so the first time.
As for resistance mutations against pleconaril [viropharma.com], the researchers at ViroPharma [viropharma.com] have already seen resistant coxsackievirus B3 variants (whatever those bugs are). They claim that, as you guessed they might be, they are less virulent. See J Infect Dis 1999 Jun;179(6):1538-41. You can look for PMID 10228078 [nih.gov] at PubMed [nih.gov] and read the abstract just as I did.
Can't escape that race (Score:1)
Non-human reservoirs are going to be problems for a while yet. Some diseases have hiding places where they can come up with new mutations. There are other strategies against them, though. We have seen great success with the combination of rabies vaccinations for most dogs and rabies vaccinations for humans when necessary. If we can reach a time when these diseases are the ones we really have to worry about, I think we'll have an easier battle with them. If we have good drugs that we don't give to the reservoir, the disease might not ever feel enough selective pressure for resistance mutations to become a great problem.
Smallpox eradication, the example you cited, was so successful because humans were its only hosts. AIDS might be specific enough to humans to allow for its elimination through multiple drug therapy and better public health.
As with AIDS multiple drug therapy, we can force the mutations necessary for resistance to be extremely unlikely, maybe impossible. It is going to take some big steps in drug development, drug prescription practices and patient cooperation.
My mother the pharmacist told me about the 30-30-30-10 problem of medication. 30% of the people will be helped by a drug. 10% will react adversely. 30% will experience neither significant benefit nor harm. The other 30% won't take the drugs.
What? (Score:1)
As for handing out cures that end up hurting or killing some, welcome to the nasty actuarial world. Many treatments are going to have beneficiaries and victims. How much non-fatal misery is one death worth? Sadly, that question probably does not matter. About half the web links I found for ViroPharma were financial profiles. You have a good point at the end of your post. Welcome to the nasty capitalist world.
If we get very good at drug design, more prophylactic drug use may not be so unreasonable. It might become an intelligent, viable public health strategy. We do not think vaccination is ridiculous even though we are effectively helping direct the evolution of some organisms. Let's consider your example, the flu. Right now, we do a pretty good job of vaccinating for the popular strains each flu season. What is stopping us from reaching a time when we can come up with effective drugs for the strains of each flu season? We are not there now. Preventative use of drugs has its dangers, as we have recently repeatedly learned. I see nothing that makes the approach intrinsically bad, though. Right now, it's just not prudent for many diseases.
As for whether viruses are living, it was a segue into explaining that viruses do carry genetic material. Because they carry genetic material that is imperfectly replicated, resistance mutations are possible in a fashion similar to resistance mutations in undebatably living organisms. Because many viruses have sloppy polymerases, their mutation, as you pointed out, can be very rapid. The flu has the added danger of antigenic shift. Hybridization can couple with mutation in deadly ways. I'm sorry you don't like my rhetorical style. Considering the discrepancies between what you read and what I wrote, my rhetoric hit a big speed bump this time.
I do not think that multiple drug resistance is no problem. I do not understand why you thought so. I have talked at length to a healthcare professional about this issue. (I call her "Mama.") A major point of my post is how difficult a problem drug resistance is.
Please allow me to clarify. I carefully chose to use "whether" in my sentence "Good biologists laugh, cry and bang their heads in frustration when people worry about whether resistance against some deadly substance will happen." We do not need to worry about whether we see a mutation. Because mutations will happen, we need to worry about what mutations we should expect, how important they will be, how they will affect the virulence of the individual mutants and the larger population. In the first post, I wrote, "[Smart farmers and doctors] concentrate on finding methods that make their weapons as effective as possible for as long as possible." I think that is exactly the point you made. There is already a journal article about pleconaril resistant mutants. I cited the abstract in another post of this thread.
I think we agree on most points in this debate. I'm sorry I didn't make my position clearer to you two posts up the tree.
Excellent point (Score:1)
Why do some say and write "virii?" (Score:1)
jargon file (Score:1)
This is good, but... (Score:1)
Note that by responsible use I mean that it's not overused. That was the problem with antibacterial stuff. It was used so much that natural selection kicked in, and now we're stuck with drug-resistant versions of many of the old diseases we thought we had conquered.
If this is used as a treatment for the common cold, I'm all for it. I just hope they don't try and market this thing as a way to prevent the common cold. Otherwise, we'll be able to hear our old buddy Darwin laughing at us as this stops working in a few decades.
Some people just get anal about words. (Score:1)
The english language continues to evolve just like a living thing. Ha, tenuously on topic or what?
If enough people say that "virii" is a real word and is the plural for "virus", then so it is.
Course, sometimes bad spelling or grammar make it difficult to read.
It's a widely used idiotic word. (Score:1)
So what's the diff? (Score:1)
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Re:So what's the diff? (Score:1)
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Insightful? (Score:1)
Re:jargon file (Score:1)
Man, that's almost as bad as gnulix
Re:Dear Rob Malda (Score:1)
Re:This is good, but... (Score:1)
--
Re:Are these kind of drugs good for the human race (Score:1)
"read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said."
--
Smart virii (Score:1)
Perhaps if the FDA requires that any antivirals be used in combination with at least 1 other, resistance could be prevented.
Re:Smart virii (Score:1)
When they were doing the first trials, some researchers noticed that some strains had become resistant, even theough the drugs were newly introduced. When penecillin was finally approved, penecillin-resistant tuberculosis was well-established.
There actually is little risk of bacteria/virii developing resistence to the drugs *IF* they are properly used. But during the first penecillin trials, they had no idea1 what proper dosing was, and therefore contributed to resistence by giving too low of a dose, or not keeping treatment up for a long enough period. At $50/$100 a 'scrip, there is a huge chance that people will take the drugs for a couple of days, and then stop because they feel better, and the drug is so expensive.
You make a good point about developing countries, and another big problem there is that many of the drugs available to them may be expired, or not fully potent. This makes resistence development more likely. Also, people in developing countries are poor (by defn.), and therefore more likely not to take a full course of treatment, but stop halfway through because they feel better.
I once knew somebody who had been on penecillin for over 10 years straight. She had had many recurrent ear-infections, so the doctor just said to stay on the drugs. She has faithfully made (nearly) every dose. Because of this, she probably isn't risking any bacteria developing resistence. On the other hand, I read about one clinic where they had a tubercular crack addict who would not ever finish their prescription. The people at the clinic were of the opinion that this one person was responsible for 3 new multi-resistant strains of tuberculosis.]
it just goes to show that how you use the drugs is very important.
I seriously doubt this will happen... (Score:1)
Re:keep the common cold around? (Score:1)
Re:The Microbe's Banquet (Score:1)
Re:Movie/book about killer common cold? (slightly (Score:1)
Re:Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:1)
I have that bacteria don't carry much "junk DNA", and I have attributed it to the cost of carrying the excess DNA (when you are a single cell in size). Certainly one would expect viruses (or Viri...I rather like that form) to be even more subject to this economy.
Re:Dumbing down of the news (Score:1)
Re:Smart virii (Score:1)
The FDA does not have the authority to regulate antiviral usage overseas, which is where most of the problem lies (such as throughout Africa, where most bacterial diseases are well over 50% resistant to second- and third-line antibiotics). Although I'm no microbiologist, there doesn't appear to me to be any reason why the exact same situation as has occured with antibacterials could not occur with antivirals. Possibly because virii are simpler creatures, although they don't lack the ability to evolve.
However, worst-case scenario is that we'll abuse the drugs for a few decades and then they'll stop working and we'll be thrown back into the archaic medical technology of the late 1990s, when viruses couldn't be fought. That might not be so hard on us, because by then we'll already have had to cope with a return to the halcyon days before we could treat polio and syphillis.
--neil
Re:Adaptation is finite (Score:1)
Agreed, and those limits are determined by the amount of variation in the population.
No matter how strong a selective pressure you excert against non-flying house cats, you'll never get one that flies
Are you sure about that? Given a large enough cat population and a suitably increasing selection pressure I bet you could get something similar to a flying fox
put down that cat! It's a gedanken experiment!
Now, there's probably some possible mutation that would cause resistance, but there's a reason why it's not common in the population.
I didn't see that data that showed it wasn't common in the population?
Also, and more importantly, it doesn't have to be common, there just has to be one (with a suitable dispersal and reproduction rate naturally - the whole thing is meaningless without a consideration of the parameters of population structure)
Disclaimer IAAEB too!
Re:What? (Score:1)
Many treatments are going to have beneficiaries and victims. How much non-fatal misery is one death worth? Sadly, that question probably does not matter.
The best response that I ever heard to one of these "utilitarian calculus" arguments was reputedly by a student in a friend's lecture where the old death-of-one-to-save-many question was being hashed over. After much debate among others he stuck up his hand and said "Speaking as the one, I'm against it....".
I guess the impression I got from your post when you were talking about "driving to extinction" and "another one taking its place" was that you seemed to be advocating mass vaccination against even non-lethal version of the viruses. This was further confirmed in my mind by the only other post I had seen from you that talked about how you'd got a flu shot because you were worried about flu killing people on a scale similar to the 1918 epidemic.
Sorry if I misunderstood you, I'm going to go look for your other posts to see if I can clarify.
Re:Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:1)
Of course evolution happens when selective pressures are significant enough to kill off most of the viral types that aren't specifically resistant
Evolution will happen even without selection pressure. In fact most evolution is neutral evolution, just the accumulation of random mutations and the stochastic fixation of alleles due to random drift. But that's besides the point - just a nit.
I'm in agreement with the rest of your point though - it would be damned hard to get people to co-operate in following whatever public health measures one tried to impose. Hence, as you very probably aware MDR TB in inner-cities of the U.S. There have been a lot of very ineffective programs and it's been damned hard to try and figure out the psychological reasons why people won't take their drugs (prophylactics I mean ;) ).
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:1)
And if I haven't completely lost my memory, that's not how the flu works. It directly kills very few (those who were really on the edge) but the most devastating effects are against the strong and healthy. The victim's own immune response is responsible for their death in many if not most cases. That cuts out your HIV argument, since an individual with a comprimised immune system will not be able to have a deadly powerful immune response. This premise is illustrated by the fact that said 1918 flu had its worst effects among otherwise young & strong soldiers participating in WWI.
Or, if you follow The Onion's point of view (from their book), it's all the fault of the Spaniards
There's a reason for these weird names (Score:1)
Re:keep the common cold around? (Score:1)
The common cold and every other virus is able to mutate like a mofo and they do it constantly. I'm sure that the common cold and a bunch of other viruses will still be able to infect us.
Bacterial and fungal inf ections would also not be affected by this drug and would still present challenges to our immune systems.
So the bottom line is don't woory.
Colds don't mutate much in humans (Score:1)
This being the case, you wouldn't necessarily expect super-strains to arise in humans, since the natural reservoir of animals won't be getting the drugs. Instead, the diseases would be effectively prevented from making the species-hop.
Re:The Microbe's Banquet (Score:1)
The hard thing is to evaluate the degree of risk.
Re:Colds don't mutate much in humans (Score:1)
The one to worry about is pig to human to chicken to pig. Repeat.
Thanks. (Score:1)
CNN. News that WHAT????
Re:Just curious (Score:1)
Very similar drugs (say, different by one atom) can have very different effects on the body. Just look at ephedrine vs. speed... they have similar effects, but definitely not the same effect.
Adaptable drugs sound cool, but we don't know what they'll adapt into. Perhaps harmful viruses themselves?
One area I could definitely see self adaptation used is in laboratory research to develop new, non adaptive drugs.
Either way, things like this are dangerous. Not that we should ignore their possibilities, just that we should tread carefully.
Re:Truly a good thing? (Sigh!) (Score:1)
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:1)
by tve (--- t.erven - chello.nl --- ( - -> @)) on Saturday January 15, @09:53AM The article states that it fits neatly into a groove on the surface of the virus. That sounds to me like the only selection process here is that of the form of this groove. So the only thing that could happen is that viri that have a different kind of groove will survive and that the others will not.
Being a biochemist/immunologist, I can tell you that the "groove" on the surface of this particular form of virus is more or less equivalent to two nostrils, in human terms. It's not something that we're going to change through evolution anytime soon - it's an integral part of our anatomy. This groove on the virus casing is pretty much the same. Our nostrils don't help us reproduce, but this groove is part of the replication process of the virus. If you inhibit this step, you inhibit the replication.
Matt
What a name... (Score:1)
Pleconaril (prounounced plah-CONN-ah-rill)
Re:Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:1)
Who said anything about quickly? From the viewpoint of the virus, it has eternity to try and evolve a defense. And as far as the bullet analogy, it would select for the fastest, most nimble humans. Now, if those humans could reproduce from infant to adult in an hour (as viruses' can), they might keep ahead of the gunman.
That's for bacteria, not viruses.
Viruses and bacteria evolve by almost identical mechanisms. Natural selection relies on random changes to the genome that impart advantages to the host, which are then passed on to the progeny. Bacteria and viruses just display these changes faster because in the matter of 24 hours, they can go through 24 generations. So it is also for viruses, not just bacteria. Hell, it's for every organism on this earth.
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:1)
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Blue screen of DEATH (Score:2)
If there's a bug, you die.
5 people have died allready while takeing the popular and heavily advertised Influenza drug "Reflenza".
Re:Blue screen of DEATH (Score:2)
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
I get somewhat annoyed by people who imply that the things humans do aren't "natural", as if beaver dams are more "natural" than the Hoover dam because they're made of wood rather than concrete. This "living balance" is *caused* by changes we (along with everything else on this planet) make and made, starting with amino acid formation and evolving into modern tech via microbes that made this world oxygen-laden. We just happen to be more observant of our changes because they tend to be large-scale (although microbes and virii can certainly beat us out for changing the environment, they're just less visible (pardon the pun)).
As for this "delicate chemical balance", I don't buy it. It's delicate in the sense that very little chemical things can do great damage (e.g. many atoms of cholrine in gaseous form). The *balance*, however, is not delicate, because the system is very flexible and efficient (efficient in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "if it isn't in use, ditch it" senses). It will readjust to the new situation - the new virii will evolve around this medication (kinda similar to the Internet routing around censorship
Brynn, who believes that since evolution gave us this nice big brain, we might as well use it
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:2)
However, the main reason we seem to be devloping superbugs at such an alarming rate, is because in western civilization, we tend to declare all-out war on the simplest infections. If you're feeling a little under the weather, or you have a minor infection, you shouldn't be taking antibiotics right off the bat. This can be just as hard on your system as the infecting agent. I'm for more homeopathic remedies for minor things, and then breaking out the big guns when things get serious. Just my silly rant though.
Re:keep the common cold around? (Score:2)
resistance and drug policy (Score:2)
Doctor's Opinion (Score:2)
His opinion on the new anti-viral drug (this isn't the only one, there is one other (Relenza) that has been on the market this year as an anti-flu/anti-cold drug) is that it is costly and relatively ineffective. The reason that it has been prescribed much at all this year is that the most common flu vaccine is proving to be ineffective itself. Combined with a lot of people deciding not to get said vaccine, Relenza has seen a fair bit of use, especially since many people can ask for it by name because of television and print advertising.
In any case, he wonders if the study presented in the article was manufacturer-sponsored. If it was, it is highly suspect. We suggest waiting until it is fully approved by the FDA before deciding if it's the miracle drug that the company claims it is, and even then he would wait until independent researchers publish their findings before prescribing it himself.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a CNN article is not extraordinary evidence, even one that has a chart. *g*
I'm a bad biologist...in fact I'm a molecular biol (Score:2)
The point is that there is no need to provide a "cure" for the common cold except in extreme cases: for people that are immune compromised due to being old,young or HIV+. As things stand there is a population of very rapidly mutating viruses providing a huge amount of variation for selection to act upon. The result of this is that there will be a rapid response to any new pharmaceutical
The result of handing out cold cures to those who don't need them is that there will - as the poster at the top of this thread suggested - be a suite of resistant forms. These will then be a threat to those that need something to cure them. The emergency, critical treatment for those people will be much less effective then it might be.
The promise of carefully designed drugs is that we can keep pace with evolution better.
Not if we don't use them intelligently. Would you for example favour the idea of spraying plane-loads of anti-virals over major urban centers before the start of each flu season?
Viruses are not living according to the biologists I know. They probably would not call them organisms.
This is really an old and pointless debate and it is a non-sequitur as far as this argument (should we use new drugs indiscriminately without considering epidemiology?) goes. The point is that viruses form a population, they reproduce with variation, thus selection takes place as with what might be unambiguously defined as "life" and with "non-life" like memes or teddy-bears (Journal of Systematic Zoology (I think it was) had a great article on teddy-bear morphology and how aesthetic selection affected the population!). As viruses have the highest rate of mutation known, they are going to adapt much more quickly even than bacteria have to antibiotics (and that has been pretty damn quick).
You seem to think that ther e is little or no problem with Multiple Drug Resistant bacteria - well, talk to any health-care professional to hear about the appalingly needless problems caused by MDR.
All of this comes about from a careless attitude to population genetics and epidemiology.
I'm not disputing that we should try and understand the mechanisms involved, I want more than that, I want us to understand and use evolution against these problems. Careful application, restricted use would see us controlling a lot of these problems. The alternative is a race between us and evolution, needless and benefiting no-one except drug companies who always have a new miracle drug available at only $50.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
2) Why? Who says we can't keep up with evolution? Germs became resistant to antibiotics, but that doesn't mean we're worse of than before we had antibiotics.
3) Argh. What, the human brain runs IIS? ARGH.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
2) Yes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use it. Using it doesn't harm anyone without antibiotics. And, as the AC said, antibiotics only work against micro-organisms...
Re:How about... (Score:2)
Re:Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:2)
One of the problems with early HIV drug therapy (specifically straight forward azt treatment) was that only a single piece of the virus was targeted. It was relatively easy for the virus to find the mutation that blocked a single drug. The more recent approach has been to use multiple drugs at once (the triple cocktail, HAART) because its significantly harder for the viral population to find a set of mutations to develop resistance to multiple drugs at once.
Similarly, the major problem with antimalarial drugs is that people don't often take them for the full length of time that they're prescribed. The result is that the infection isn't entirely destroyed and returns, but with a higher proportion of slightly resistant variants. When this happens through a series of hosts, the ultimate result is a fully resistant strain (which is why neither mefloquine nor chloroquine will help you in much of Thailand).
Both of these considerations are important with regard to this antiviral. A viral species can indeed be wiped out by drug therapy, just as smallpox was wiped out by vaccination. But when a drug is so frequently prescribed for so many afflictions (which will no doubt be the case with this one), there's little chance that it will remain effective for long. It's unclear whether resistant viruses will be more or less virulent then the current strains, but the people who need these drugs (immuosuppressed patients) will be the ones who lose out.
With well researched and controlled treatment, this could be a very beneficial treatment and could, for instance, rid ourselves of rhinovirus. But that's not likely.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
How do you know that these viruses aren't in fact modifying our genetic code to cause us "to grow wings?" The inablity to forsee all posiblities is not an excuse for inaction, and certainly not an excuse to submit people to pain and death for your "darwinian fitness".
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
A cure for influenza may be somewhat like the spice from Herbert's Dune: it allowed many people to live their lives for longer and in unimaginable ways, but was a deadly addiction. Granted, the influenza cure probably isn't addictive, but the duality between truth and worth, effect and consequence is not clear. Administering a cure of unknown consequence may have worse consequences than not administering it at all. From a personal perspective, the choice is obvious: we give the cure, but from a holistic perspective the choice is not clear at all, and not to be made lightly.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
I do know that common diseases, including influenza, do cause death in AIDS patients, as up until 1993 (IIRC - see WHO [who.org]) influenza was the largest killer in the world - a statistic consisting mostly of those with advanced HIV, until strains of antibiotic resistent TB started making a comeback in 3rd world countries. (TB now being the largest killer in the world)
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
We must acknowledge two circumstances, first that a single chemical entity could end the world as we know and accept in a catalyst form, and second that our own industrialized chemical production could spread harmful entities (see DDT and tobacco) to all places where humanity exists. Failure to accept these possibilities is a most highly dangerous ignorance.
Also of note: nature is only efficient in terms of generations. Intragenerational modifications to a species are relatively minute, but generational natural selection is what makes nature so adaptable. Without generational selection, evolution is stagnated, which is the state of homo sapiens as we read this.
As humans, our main selection criteria are poverty and deadly addictions (and isolated modifiers). The fact that we can reason about this sort of thing does not change the fact that at some point, something will curb our growth. If not ourselves, then something else. (Unless we explore altenative habitats, like space and oceans).
Re:The Microbe's Banquet (Score:2)
The link between global warming and viral diseases is this.
Viruses don't live and reproduce on their own. They are dependent upon another organism to provide the machinery for replication. Also, some viruses do not infect people directly, but through a "vector" organism, such as a kissing bug or mosquito.
The range of the natural host and vector organisms change with climate change (human or natural) and with ecological disruption. Furthermore not just any mosquito can carry, say, encephelitis. The viruses that infect people via mosquitoes require specific bits of biological machinery to amplify within the mosquito. This is why you can't get AIDS from a mosquito bite.
Mosquito ranges are exquisitely temperature sensitive. A change of half a degree or so can create pockets of viable habitat within temperate areas of tropical species.
Also, another example purely of ecological disruption is Lyme disease, which probably existed in deer population for thousands of years. In the Northeast, farmers cleared the land and removed natural predators. When the land reverted to suburbs, the deer population close to humans increased, without a significant top level predator such as wolves.
A friend of mine lives on an island with deer, and every one of his family has gotten Lyme disease. About a decade ago,the western coyote, moving into the abandoned ecological slot in New England, swam to the island and killed almost the entire deer population and much of the rodent population. Now the deer herds are much smaller. Last time I visited for about four or five days of tramping around, I didn't get a single tick on me.
I am skeptical, but hopeful (Score:2)
First of all, I have yet to see mention of this medicine in either JAMA or the New England Journal. I don't know where or if the Phase I trials were ever published. So, as far as this particular thing ever materializing, there's a lot of doubt in my mind.
However, I do say that eventually we will see something that will work. The ability to use x-ray and other techniques to probe the 3-D structure of viral receptors and recent advantages in immunology make "smart" drug design the clear way to go. The article unfortunately does not mention specific points the drugs attack, but there are many vulnerable points on all viruses. And where they attack will, in my mind, make a difference as to whether we'll ever see the extinction of these viruses.
The small RNA viruses (picornaviruses - which actually include the two genuses mentioned - enteroviridae and rhinoviridae) do mutate at a rapid rate. However, many if not most of them have humans as their only host. If a drug struck at the appropriate point in the viral life cycle, it would be possible to wipe it out. Now, this drug is far too expensive and the rhinovirus is far too mild to warrant the necessary world-wide attack. But other members (poliovirus, hepatitis A), even though they have relatively cheap vaccines available, might benefit from having a product which affect viral transfer after infection.
In the end, this development probably isn't too significant. Some people in the developed world will have a way to fight off some symptoms of a bad cold. Shorten their suffering by a few days. Now, I'd like to see this technique applied to something important like the rotavirus, which kills more than a million children worldwide with its diarrhea. Of course, most companies would rather be known as the people who cured the common cold rather than the people who stopped deadly diarrhea in some far off place. So it goes.
Invicta{HOG}
Re:What about HIV? (Score:2)
If there aren't a few startups working on it already, I'd be quite surprised. However, remember that the 3d structure of the viruses that this drug targets was mapped back in 1985 and it has taken until now to get a drug ready...
--
Will Dyson
What about HIV? (Score:2)
Any reason why not?
please, god, let it be effective on cold sores! (Score:2)
keep the common cold around? (Score:2)
Curing the cold is one more step towards us growing soft and useless. Of course, there are plenty of good reasons for doing this (such as learning about curing stuff in general), but it's just a feeling.
Re:Hope I'm wrong... (Score:2)
From what I remember from Immunology I believe that the immune system will respond to even just a few virus particles.
So what this drug probably does is reduce the number of active virus particles to which the immune response has to mount a response, reducing the severity and length of the disease.
So, I do believe that the patient will still gain immunity against the virus.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
Note that the story did not say that the viruses were intelligent - just that evolution had decided that it was a competitive advantage for them to help their hosts.
If we end up with the ability to nullify all vectors which are harmful to ourselves (and keep up with their rate of evolution), then will it become evolutionary necessary for the bacteria & viruses to be HELPFUL to us (so that we don't eliminate them)?
Think lost productivity (Score:2)
And if it can help you get over the flu any faster, sign me up!
This is the same reason why HIV evolves so fast (Score:2)
The rhino virus also exhibits rapid genetic change. This is the main reason why we never develop immunity to them. We never get hit by the same one twice. I don't even want to imagine how much Pleconaril will accelerate their evolution.
Another reason the Human Genome Proj. is important (Score:2)
"Usually the major problem with antiviral drugs is safety," [Dr. Catherine Laughlin] says. "It's hard to find something that kills the virus and doesn't kill the cell.... There are no similar cellular processes in the body. But you never know."
Once we have the entire sequence, we WILL know (well, realistically speaking, probably not until we figure out how to predict protein folding, too, but it's a big step to getting there), and it'll make designing drugs like this even easier. Add in the technique of DNA shuffling (sexual PCR), and we might actually have a chance at keeping pace with evolution.
Re:Truth and Effects (Score:2)
1. We should also be carefull about the 'genetic' health of the human race as a whole.
2. We should be carefull that viri don't keep on evolving up to a level that we entirely loose control.
Good point there. I guess we should start debugging humans then using genetic engineering. I wonder what the first bugtraq-post would look like...
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:2)
I could be entirely wrong however. Does anyone have a more specific knowledge of the subject? Does Dustin Hoffman or any of the other guys from 'Outbreak' read
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:2)
The major problem with all drugs which target the picornaviruses is the high mutation rate of the virus. As the other reply to this message points out, it's not a question of whether a virus will learn how to avoid a particular drug, but when. Mutations will happen and the viruses which come into contact with the drug will. Just like bacteria become resistant to drugs, viruses will too. It won't take long before subtle changes to the virus structures will render any drug useless, especially if it's thrown about with gay abandon, like antibiotics have been.
Another doubt that I have surrounds the blanket statement that the drug will be effective against the "common cold": the last time I checked there were 102 distinctly different viruses which fitted that bill, and they were divided into two groups. Antibodies - the sharp end of the immune systems response to a viral infection - which recognise members of one group won't have any impact on members of the other group. Yet we're to believe that a single, simple drug molecule is going to knock out every type of common cold virus, plus polio, plus enteroviruses, plus a handful of other viruses ?
Maybe I'm just a sceptic, but I find it hard to see how this drug can live up the hype which will undoubtedly surround it.
Re:Hope I'm wrong... (Score:2)
Beta Test... (Score:2)
TC
-----
"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you." --Rita Mae Brown
Eh, WHAT?? (Score:2)
Hope I'm wrong... (Score:2)
Imagine a 30-year old cured against common cold from his childhood, having not developed immunity. Exactly what is going to happen when he simply doesn't get the drug anymore and all the common cold viruses strike him simultaneously?
Just curious (Score:2)
The dynamic model seems to be the real breakthrough. At some point we will develop medicines that can themselves evolve to match their viral and bacteriological enemies. Adaptability is essentially what nano-technology promises in medicine, but it does not have to be nano-technology. We may some day engineer our own anti-virus virus, our own anti-bacteriological bacteria.
How far away is this dynamic medicine? What will be the consequences of it? Will we have to take drugs to stop the cure from curing us? Will our existence become a continual juggling act of cure management?
Re:Blue screen of DEATH (Score:3)
How many people worldwide in a given year die from Influenza?
In 1996, 3.6 percent of all the deaths in the US were of either Influenza or Pneumonia brought on by Influenza.
That's greater than the number of deaths by AIDS, homicide and suicide put together according to the CDC.
Five deaths? What a horror!
Re:Truly a good thing? (Sigh!) (Score:3)
Shanep dun said:
From what I've read, most of the possible increased colon cancer risk isn't so much from the meat itself as from ways of preparation (specifically, grillng meat till it's charred and/or frying it can form nitrosamines, which are potent carcinogens). Most of the other risks of meat-eating come largely from human bungling (there is probably some risk of cancer from the hormones moos and other animals are pumped full of, there is the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection from people pumping animals fulla antibiotics to fatten them up [one of the side effects of some antibiotics happens to be animals put weight on faster] and if one lives in the EC there is the risk of new-variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease [which recently was proved to be caused by the same prion that causes mad cow disease] from eating beef because humans made the positively stupid decision to feed cows rendered sheep remains which just happened to have died from scrapie).
There are some cases where people live on a diet almost entirely consisting of meat and don't regularly die of cancer; the Inuit, for one, live almost entirely on meat but don't die of cancer (largely because a lot of their food is eaten raw or boiled) the way we do in the West.
As a minor aside--a lot of colon cancer in the US is actually due to genetic factors that increase the tendency. Most of the genetic errors that have been found in familial colon cancer have directly to do with cell repair farging up (one cancer syndrome points to the P53 oncogene, which when damaged increases the chances of cancer radically; there have been several others found).
Incidentially--I wouldn't count vegetarianism out entirely for risks of cancer, either. Japan and other Asian countries have a drastically higher rate of stomach cancer, which is thought to be possibly related to the fact they eat polished rice as a large part of their diet; it is also suspected by some doctors that the rise in rates of breast and prostate cancer in the US are related to herbicides used on the majority of plants (many of the herbicides used are "estrogen-mimics"; this has had especially bad effects in Florida, where the land is so polluted from agricultural runoff that feminised male alligators and Florida panthers have been found in the Everglades) and some also suspect herbicides to be responsible for the drop in sperm counts in most Western countries.
I will grant, though, that most vegetarians do tend to take care of themselves better than most other folks; probably responsible for your rapid healing. Then again, I consider that part of being smart about one's health anyways (myself, I have to be careful about checkups because of strong family histories of colon cancer and diabetes--so I don't overload on fatty stuff (which is where most nitrosamines are stored as well as cancer-causing pesticides that are still in the food chain), I try to go organic-beef when possible (so the cows aren't pumped full of chemicals--better for you AND the moo), and I eat stuff with antioxidants like broccoli (which can help out a fair amount with beating genetic problems with cell repair such as those that cause familial colon cancer).
Going to EITHER extreme (total carnivore or total herbivore) prolly isn't real healthy, though; humans are obligate omnivores (there are some vitamins we do require from animal foods, and vegans have to be VERY careful to balance B vitamins for example; we are also obligate fruit-eaters, since we can't synthesize vitamin C like other non-primate animals) and pretty much have been since the ancestors of all apes (including humans and our closest relatives chimps and bonobos) evolved from monkeys. (Chimps and bonobos both share around 98 percent of our DNA and are omnivorous; so was, likely, Australopithecus. Gorillas are really the only apes adapted for a largely herbivorous lifestyle and have a much larger gut than other apes to digest plant matter; maybe in a few million years if a society of humans walls off and goe entirely vegan we'll have gorilla-bellied Homo who can live entirely off plants. :)
Oddly, milk-drinking (and, more to the point, the ability to properly digest milk) is actually a wonderful example of evolution (since the thread is largely on concerns of rhinoviruses and picornaviruses (the targets of Pleconaril) becoming resistant to Pleconaril eventually)...
Most milk-drinking started among people who raised moos in Europe, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia (specifically India). These populations generally have a high percentage of people who can digest lactose (milk-sugar) after infancy, because they've been drinking milk for so long as a population that there's been enough time and "mutation pressure" that there aren't a lot of lactose-intolerant folks left.
In cultures that generally have not raised moos for milk or have not raised moos at all (largely Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, much of Asia, parts of Africa where they never raised moos for milk, and people who are descended from those groups) there is a much higher rate of lactose intolerance (enough that in the US, they actually sell lactose-free milk and lactase pills), and folks who don't have the ability to produce lactase after infancy tend to get all bloaty and farty and have diarrhea if they attempt to drink milk or eat non-fermented dairy products (cheese and yogurt are easier for them to eat). They never had the gene selected for, so it's not all that common. (For that matter, a lot of African-Americans and especially Native Americans also lack genes selecting for breakdown of ethyl alcohol and for rapid breakdown of sucrose--because until fairly recently those genes weren't selected for. So Native Americans have a much higher incidence of type II diabetes (sometimes shockingly so--something like ninety percent of the Pima people who are adults have type II diabetes) and problems in drinking alcohol.)
As a minor aside--most animals don't produce lactase after infancy, either. This includes--of all animals--cats, who we feed cream to on occasion. (Cream actually has less lactose in it than milk does.) You really shouldn't feed too much milk to kitties, because if one does kitty WILL get the runs and fart (and trust me, kitty farts are NOT the most pleasant thing in the world). There are kitties on occasion that CAN produce lactase and can handle milk ok (and maybe in a few thousand years most kitties will be able to handle it--it's only the last few hundred years that kitties have been seen more as pets than as gods/demons/the little furry things what eat the mousies), but one does have to be careful about it.
This is not to say I don't agree that we've not been arrogant at times (like with mad cow disease or filling animals fulla chemicals)...I think in a way it's probably been mean how we breed dairy cows, for example (they get so full they can barely walk, the poor things...and then they moo pathetically, as if saying "MILK ME BEFORE I BLOW UUUUP!" as they go from show-ring at the fair to the milking station [they usually show moos with full udders, btw--at cow shows they wanna see the "capacity" of the moo] dripping milk or even streaming sometimes...and the poor moos look SOOOO relieved when the milking starts and they get fifty pounds of milk off of a poor Holstein who looks as if ALL of her feed went straight to her udders). I'm the first to agree that we should live more in balance with our fellow creatures and the planet, and Western civilisation probably eats more meat and milk than it should.
All the same, though...we have been determined enough (or stupid enough, your call) to breed animals to the point that we aren't going to just be able to release them into the wild. With dairy cows, for instance, they now intimately depend on humans to milk them precisely because humans have bred for big-uddered moos that give fifty pounds of milk in a setting (yes, I've actually seen this with a champion Brown Swiss at the Kentucky State Fair--it STILL amazes me that the poor moo can have THAT much milk in her)...if they DON'T get milked, the milk turns infectious and they get mastitis (humans sometimes get it too and it's called "milk fever"--nasty stuff; pus gets in the milk and it turns yellow) and they can well die from it if it's not treated (because it can go into septicemia or gangrene) and at the very least it makes moos VERY ill. Yes, it's the humans' fault for making them basically milk machines, but since we have we've got the responsibility to make sure they don't get sick from it (and maybe in time to breed them to something a little more sensible--there are no wild moos anymore, the closest there are to wild moos are the half-feral pointed cows of Ireland, and I seriously doubt moos would be able to survive in the wild--it's been bred out of them).
Of course, I also think that one has a responsibility to be kind to the cow as one can (making sure it's comfy and treated kindly, and not pumped fulla chemical crap) and to use all of the cow if one must kill it...and to be thankful to the cow and remember that you ARE taking a life or getting a gift from the cow (in the case of milk). (Then again, I have weird morals on that. I think eating meat is ok if one uses all the animal one can and is thankful and one does right by the animal that gave the gift of life so you might survive. I do NOT approve of trophy hunting, and to be honest I don't like the extremes to which some dairy cows have been bred because it looks bloody uncomfortable for the moo in question--but if one is thankful to the moo, I don't see a problem with, say, milking a Jersey and using the milk.)
Now, as for harming the young...the only things I can think of are lactose intolerance and milk allergy. The first is genetically determined, and no, I don't think lactose intolerant folks should have to drink milk. As for milk allergy, that's largely caused by introducing milk too early to kids; realistically, though, ANYTHING can cause a food allergy if fed too early to a kid. (In a lot of non-Western cultures, kids are regularly breast-fed all the way to the age of two or even later, and parents MIGHT start introducing solid food at age one or when the kid starts showing interest. In Western cultures, kids are often bottle-fed and solid food introduced as early as three or four months of age...sometimes I wonder if this is the cause of increases in food allergies, as most maternal antibodies start going away at three or four months if kids aren't breast-fed and this is when kids' immune systems start really kicking in; this is why baby shots also typically start around 3-4 months).
Then again, an issue could well be made over parents bottle-feeding kids period. :) (I understand there are some cases where one has to--like if a baby has a rare metabolic disorder like PKU or maple-syrup urine disease, or if a mother CAN'T give milk [me and my sis were bottle-fed for this reason--my mother had polycystic breast disease, where there are hardly any milk glands to GIVE milk in the first place]. But if one can, breast-feeding really IS best; babies handle it much better, it gives stuff like antibodies and other substances like colostrum that babies need. A lot of the ire at pharmaceutical companies in fact involves them donating formula to third-world countries (humans tend to dry up if their babies don't regularly nurse, and this gets them "hooked" on formula; also, most water supplies in third-world countries would put one at risk of Moctezuma's Revenge at best, and it's thought that dirty water used in making formula contributes to thousands, if not millions, of babies dying from diarrhea and dehydration from the runs in third-world countries; it's also been proven that breast-feeding as traditionally practiced in these cultures (up to the age of two-three, very slow introduction of solid food) actually has a protective effect against severe infant diarrhea)...that's probably for another thread, though.
Re:So what's the diff? (Score:3)
JohnL dun said:
Well...actually...we HAVE seen some epidemics of drug-resistant microorganisms both here and in the third world. Specifically, there have been many cases of strep resistant to several of the commonly used drugs to treat it, and there have been several cases in hospitals of strep and staph that are resistant to even the last-line (not in clinical trials) drug, vancomycin...there is a new drug that was recently approved specifically to deal with this, and the FDA now has antibiotics specifically on the "fast track" to deal with antibiotic resistance.
This isn't restricted to staph and strep, btw; multidrug-resistant TB is becoming a major problem in larger cities, with some TB strains literally resistant to every approved drug to treat TB; they've had to go to the idea of setting up "sanitarium wards" in hospitals and sending public health workers directly to homes to make sure people take their TB medicine (which often runs over a year in treatment). From what I have read, it is also a fairly major problem in Russia and the third world...to the point that multidrug-resistant TB, strep and staph are considered emerging infectious diseases.
The problem isn't restricted to antibiotics, btw; antiviral resistance has been documented (there are strains of HIV that are resistant to zidovudine [AZT] and cases of multidrug-resistant HIV have been found--this is why HIV patients are typically given a cocktail of upwards of three or four different antivirals, each with different mechanisms of action...there are also some cases of acyclovir-resistant herpes infections, which is why there are so many herpes drugs), as well as antifungal (strains of Candida (yeast infections) are known that are resistant to literally every drug short of amphotericin B and drugs still in experimental trials such as nikkomycin Z; amphotericin B is literally so toxic that one must typically be hospitalised for treatment, and until nikkomycin Z is approved it is possible that Candida strains may arise that are resistant to ALL known antifungals, azoles and amphotericin B alike), and especially antimalarial drugs (chloroquine resistance is common throughout Africa, Asia and South America, many of the malaria strains (including falciparum malaria, which is really the worst kind of malaria you can get) in Southeast Asia are resistant to mefloquine, most of these are becoming resistant or are already resistant to quinine, and some strains from Thailand and Vietnam are literally resistant to every antimalarial drug not in clinical trials for safety including doxycycline). (Multidrug-resistant malaria is an especially serious problem, as malaria is still one of the largest killers (around two million a year), there is no real vaccine for it, and pretty much the only way to keep from getting malaria other than killing every mosquito on the planet [good luck!] is to take antimalarial drugs...most of which are also used to treat malaria, alas :P).
As a minor aside...some epidemics that are indirectly antibiotic-related are the epidemics of food poisoning that regularly occur in the US now. What with the rise of antibiotics in feed, often as much to fatten animals up as to be able to crowd more animals into factory-farming arrangements (which are ripe for breeding disease; animals tend not to be quite so hygenic, especially livestock), both farms and meat processign plants have been increasingly lax in enforcing standards meant to keep food from being contaminated. (This is especially bad in chickens, who are often put in buildings five and six cages high and bred for the maximum number of chickens in a room; they are often altered (beaks blunted, large amounts of antibiotics fed both for increased weight gain and to keep the chickens from dying of infections from the obviously unhygenic conditions). I think we all know of the risks of salmonella as a result [one must be EXTREMELY careful to make sure the chicken is completely done, anything using raw eggs is a no-no, and many doctors recommend to folks with HIV not to eat eggs at all because of the risk of salmonella]. For that matter, same deal with ground beef and E. coli infections.)
Re:The Microbe's Banquet (Score:3)
Yeah, it's interesting to think of us (humanity) as an ecosystem that other creatures live in.
What makes us a bigger target (so to speak) for virus and harmful bacteria is simply our sucess at propagating. As I recall, our biomass (number of individuals times average weight) is now greater than any other vertebrate species (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish). Combine that with our habit of living in large, crowded cities, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
The only thing saving us currently (until more anti-virals and antibiotics come along) is good hygine. So wash your hands after you've gone to the bathroom, dammit!
If you're interested in the evolutionary biology view on all this, I recommend Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague".
I wonder when this will get here (Score:3)
Oh wait, that already happened. Sorry
Side effects? (Score:3)
(Score: -1, Oh...my...god!)
Truth and Effects (Score:3)
With the advent of a vaccine or cure to any given case of the flu, we can completely circumvent a pandemic instance of influenza. But the side effects of wide-spread population usage of any particular high-concentration drug could have drastic long-term effects on a population that we simply cannot forsee. We might all grow wings, I honestly don't know, but I would suggest that something added to the "living equilibrium", such as a (relatively) spontaneously created medication, has the potential to unbalance many of the delicate chemical systems we need to live a healthy, darwinian fit, happy life.
We must then weigh, should a pandemic influenza arise, the benefits of a cure versus the benefits of not using a cure. But if a cure exists, and people are dying, they will desire said cure, side effects be damned. At least, I would desire said cure.
Truly a good thing? (Score:3)
Nature tends to "find a way" to create balance (often through chaos and destruction) in the world's systems of life. As has happened with many other kinds of virii and bacteria, when we find a "cure" for one strain, another strain emerges that is resistent to our medicine, and is often stronger and more effective.
Curing the common cold is great, but I'm scared that the common cold as we know it may then become a disease that gives us much more to worry about than a few days home in bed.
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:3)
On a slight tangent, next time anyone wonders why we should keep our "basic science" research budget, I saw a talk on this very subject by Dr. Michael Rossman of Purdue University. In 1992. I specifically remember the "comfort index" slide, where they measured grams of snot blown out of patient's noses with and without the drug. Yum.
Which leads to my next even more off subject rant, the fact that they "designed this from scratch." The truth is, no drugs have yet to enter the market that way, even this one. Don't get me wrong, this is an extremely powerful technique, and being an x-ray crystallographer, I'm very glad the drug companies are interested in protein structure and dynamics.
That being said the way it really works is this:
- Solve the structure of the virus or protein of interest which you hypothesize is causing the disease or symptoms of the disease.
- Using the structure of the protein, try to figure out the mechanism of "how it works," and localize it to a particular area of the protein.
- Try to find "pockets" in the protein near this area where you could design a drug to bind which would then disrupt the function of the protein
- Ask your theoreticians (computer geeks with doctorates in physics or chemistry who look like the "pulsing head" aliens in the old Star Trek) to design a drug to fit in the pocket.
- If you are CNN, you have a drug, viola! If you are in the real world, here is where the real work begins.
- Through an iterative process, design the drug, find out it doesn't bind quite the way you thought it should, or with a viable affinity, and turn it back over to the chemists, who then stick every chemical group known to humankind on it to try to get it to bind tighter. You then reassay it's activity, solve the structure again, but this time bound to the new drug, and see how the changes you made affected how well it binds to the protein, and try to correlate these changes to the difference in affinity you observe.
- If you are lucky, you find one that binds with a suitable affinity and specificity (doesn't help if it binds the viral protein but also binds proteins in the body needed to reproduce).
- Years later, your drug passes clinical trials (actually, in most cases it doesn't, because your designs don't take things like toxicity into account, only how well it binds the protein of interest) and you are now the proud parent of an antiviral, or in most cases making the news lately, an HIV protease inhibitor.
Also keep in mind when I say "you," I mean a large team of scientists with an incredible array of backgrounds.
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:3)
Of course I'm probably wrong, in which case there's no real reason to correct me. I know I'm an idiot.
Related and other stuff (Score:3)
Re:Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:3)
That's part of the significance of this type of drug, that it was specifically designed based on knowledge of the 3D structure of a viral protein. Resistance mutations will obviously occur, but these mutations can only go so far. If the drug is intelligently designed and binds to a part of the protein that is critical for its proper function, for example, resistance mutations will give rise to defective viruses. I read a while ago that this had been observed by people developing neuraminidase inhibitors; I'm not sure if this new drug might be one of those (I'll have to read the paper).
In terms of resistance mutations, it's also important not to confuse viruses with bacteria, which are much more complex and become resistant in different ways.
Fifty Bucks to Cure a Cold? (Score:3)
As the articles says, however, the cold is not the most exciting application. This will certainly do a lot of people a lot of good.
One thought, though... Who would pay $50-$100 to get rid of a cold three or four days sooner?!!? I can certainly understand painful meningitis, but a cold? Come on!
OTOH, it certainly is great to see the hardworking medical geeks finally getting some recognition!
Re:Hey, I want those nano-devices! (Score:4)
Hmm...
Norton AntiVirus (Organic Edition)
Peter Norton's guide to Home Health.
# shiver # - No thanks.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:keep the common cold around? (Score:4)
This sounds like it could be a very big deal for developing nations, not just "the cushy part of the world". The problem is the price -- the company wants $50-100 for a single treatment. I wonder what their costs actually are, and if they'll lower prices once they've paid for development.
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Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score:4)
Yes, and it's "viruses," not "virii." (Score:5)
Don't try to outsmart yourself with Latin. The correct plural is "viruses [perl.com]".
Natural selection happens. It will happen with this drug. It will happen without this drug. It will happen on a train. It will happen on a plane. It is impossible (or nearly so) to stop. Unless biology changes drastically, evolution will keep going until every strain of every organism is obliterated.
Good biologists laugh, cry and bang their heads in frustration when people worry about whether resistance against some deadly substance will happen. The evolution of many organisms is hard to track because we do not notice great survival pressures bearing down on them. Provide enough pressure, and the organisms will evolve. If a drug, pesticide or herbicide is good enough, it will provide selective pressure. Evolution will happen. It happened against superpesticides that farmers thought would work forever. It happened against our miracle drugs.
The smart doctors and farmers have stopped thinking ridiculous thoughts such as, "Will evolution happen this time?" They know that, somehow, it will. Even if they drive one species to extinction, another one can take its place. They concentrate on finding methods that make their weapons as effective as possible for as long as possible.
Viruses are not living according to the biologists I know. They probably would not call them organisms. Many viruses carry DNA, just as living organisms do. Some carry RNA, and it functions similarly. All DNA and RNA molecules are subject to damage and to errors in base pairing. Mutation is going to happen. When mutation happens, evolution can and will happen.
The promise of carefully designed drugs is that we can keep pace with evolution better. Much drug development is still done with a shotgun. Researchers expose the bugs to chemicals and pick out the effective ones. We do not understand how many antimicrobials work. We just know that they do work and that they are not too toxic. By understanding disease mechanisms, more drugs can be designed and not just discovered. Even when a new bug appears, researchers will be able to discover how it works and to design chemicals that interfere.
The Microbe's Banquet (Score:5)
It's not just cool. We're going to need this capability.
In some ways you can view viruses such as influenza or hantavirus as a kind of natural defense. They live for generations in natural populations of birds and rodents with little or no ill effects, and in some cases have been incorporated into the genese of the hosts. Humans probably have hundreds, if not thousands of viruses that are passed down through our stem cells. When an immunolgically naive population tries to muscle in on the terrirtory -- blamm! They're infected,like they were hit by a biological land mine. Disrupting a natural ecosystem can cause a species, for example deer, to explode, with their endemic diseases like Lyme disease to explode.
People are moving places they didn't go before (because of what we used to call "pestilence"), peturbing the natural ecology there, and moving with unprecedented speed across the globe. This means that completely novel viruses like Ebola or can be uncovered. Also, disease once endemic to limited areas such as West Nile encephelitis can be spread rapidly to new areas such as the Northeast US. It's no different from Kudzu or Zebra mussels except that it's on the microscopic scale and the ecosystem being colonized is us.
While there is at least a little doubt about global warming, what is clear is that climate is warming around inhabited parts of the planet. This increases, or at least changes the range of disease carrying organisms like certain mosquito species in places where they come into proximity with people. Mexico city is protected by its altitude from Malaria, but as the city expands and the region warms, the vertical range of Malaria bearing mosquitoes is increasing.
We don't take this very seriously, but a disease like Yellow Fever can kill thousands. At the end of the 18th century, Philidelphia almost collapsed because of a Yellow Fever epidemic. In the 1890s ten percent of the population of Jacksonville and something like half the population of the city fled. This led to the start of mosquito control programs in Florida; however it's not clear whether we've just had blind luck so far that it hasn't happened again. Historically, Yellow Fever has struck as far North as New York City.
Also, increasing population makes more aggressive "tactics" work better for these infectious agents. Remember the Volterra predator prey equation in Diff EQ? It's a microbe's banquet out there.
We either have to develop the ability to quickly tailor medicines to completely novel infectious agents, perhaps combined with vector control, OR we have to radically change our civilization to reduce population growth, restrict population movements into virgin territory (especially tropical), reduce our impact on environment, and generally reduce the level of global travel. These things might be worth doing in themselves, but speaking as someone who has at least a bit of a leaning towards environmentalism, I'm not optimistic about our ability to set the direction of our civilization out of our own volition.