New Drug Could Cure Nearly Any Viral Infection 414
HardYakka writes "A team of researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory have designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection. The researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever."
What's a virus? (Score:5, Interesting)
So does a false positive mean you're dead?
Drug: Must find viruses. Oh, there's one...I think. And that one too. Oooh, actually, they're ALL viruses!
Todd Rider (Score:4, Interesting)
Also the man who has so far explained why inertial-confinement fusion can't work [fusor.net]. Maybe.
I knew he was involved in medical research, but this is pretty awesome.
Re:It's called Kalocin. (Score:4, Interesting)
That would actually be my worry. Enough people already take drugs when they have the slight discomfort or to cure their flu (despite anti-bacterials having no effect on the flu). What's going to happen when they can take a drug for all that stuff? At the rate we use drugs, it seems like this one would be burned out and ineffective pretty fast unless the government really restricts it (more the Cipro or other other drugs that are left).
The idea of bugs that become resistant to all this stuff, or a drug that people can't stop taking because of horrible side effects... that sounds like great news. Can we please be careful not to invent/breed ourselves into a pseduo-Descolada [wikipedia.org]?
Re:It's called Kalocin. (Score:2, Interesting)
Just come up with a cure for AIDS...so we can all get laid again without worrying or feeling guilty about screwing without a fuckin' rubber.....
Geez, the day they cure AIDS, I'm predicting the divorce rate will skyrocket with a ton of guys going "Later Bitch"....and not having to worry about dying if they get laid by someone different.
Oh well....sure would be nice to go back to the days before AID's..when you really didn't worry as long as she was on the pill, and anything you caught for the most part...could be cured with a quick shot.
Re:What's a virus? (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance, lets assume Alzheimer's is caused (as suspected) by a combination of a defective APoE gene and an HSV1 infection. So if the vast majority of brain cells are infected but the brain is (more or less) still highly functional... wouldn't this theoretically kill every one of those brain cells, essentially advancing alzheimer's itself many-fold in a matter of weeks?
But where does that leave our immune systems? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder, though, where a treatment like this leaves the human immune system.
A vaccine spurs the immune system to generate antibodies, so that when we're actually infected by the virus, the antibodies are available to combat it. Our own immune systems do all the work.
This new type of treatment, however, kills off the cells that have been infected by viruses, so the viruses aren't able to use the cell's materials to replicate. As the cells die, so do the viruses. From the sound of it, the treatment achieves this without any assistance from the immune system.
So to put it bluntly, in a world where everybody pops a few anti-flu pills every time they get a little sniffle, what does the human immune system do all day? I can see two possible outcomes:
Re:It's called Kalocin. (Score:4, Interesting)