- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Could there be a cure out there not just for the
common cold, but for the miseries of flu?
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- Researchers at several companies are
reporting this weekend on a drug that might stop the most common cold virus
in its tracks, drugs that ease the miseries of flu, and even drugs that
can stop flu from infecting people.
-
- They have told a meeting of the American
Society for Microbiology in San Diego that there is finally hope for victims
of flu, which not only causes a wretched week or two of headaches, coughing
and sneezing, but kills thousands every year.
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- Glaxo Wellcome says its drug Relenza,
shown last year to shorten a flu attack by one day, can be used almost
as a vaccine against the virus.
-
- Tests on college students showed Relenza,
known generically as zanamivir, could reduce flu risk by 67 percent. Eleven
students who used Relenza, or 2 percent, caught a flu virus sweeping their
campus, while the 34 people, or 6 percent, who did not take the drug caught
the flu.
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- The drug comes in the form of a powder
and is inhaled using a pocket-sized puffer device.
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- Another study at the University of Virginia
showed zanamivir, given intravenously, prevented flu infection in six out
of seven volunteers.
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- Another drug, GS4104, developed by F.
Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. and California biotechnology company Gilead Sciences
Inc., reduced a flu attack by about a third, and relieved symptoms.
-
- Both drugs are in Phase III clinical
trials, the last stage before a company can ask for approval from the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
-
- Both target the same enzyme in the virus
-- neuraminidase.
-
- It is used by the virus to replicate
itself.
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- The drugs attach themselves to the enzyme,
effectively clogging up the mechanism used by the virus to attack cells,
and making it helpless.
-
- Another drug known as FluMist works as
a nose spray vaccine. FluMist, made by Aviron, has been shown to give 93
percent protection against infection and 98 percent protection against
the ear infections that accompany flu in many children.
-
- Robert Belshe of Saint Louis University,
who tested the drug, thinks it will offer a much easier way to vaccinate
children and others wary of needles.
-
- Current vaccines work fairly well, with
about a 30 percent failure rate. But there are countless strains of flu
that mutate every year and the virus kills between 10,000 and 40,000 Americans
each year.
-
- There are two other anti-flu drugs already
on the market -- amantadine, made by several companies, and rimantadine,
made by Forest Pharmaceuticals. But they only fight the influenza A strain,
while Relenza and GS4104 seem to work against both influenza A and B.
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- Novavax Inc., based in Columbia, Md.,
reported that test-tube trials of its drug, a "nanoemulsion"
known as BCTP, showed it reduced levels of antigens for influenza A by
99.6 percent.
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- Antigens are the chemicals to which the
immune system responds, and are a good indicator of how much virus remains
in the system.
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- In a second study, mice that had BCTP
and virus sprayed into their noses stayed healthy, while three mice that
got a virus alone developed severe pneumonia and two died.
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