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Americans were asked to cover their mouths and noses for more than a year to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. Now, the mouth might be the surest path forward to save lives with oral antiviral pills becoming the next focus of the U.S. government’s response. The U.S. government is pumping up to $3.2 billion into the antiviral program, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Thursday. The Biden administration wants the program, part of the American Rescue Plan, to have a longer-term impact to discover and create antivirals for other potential pandemic viruses.Those who are unvaccinated or...

Unlike antibiotics, which kill many different types of bacteria, antiviral drugs for the most part need to target individual, specific viruses. A drug that attacks a multitude of viruses -- an antibiotic for viruses, effectively -- would be a significant boon for medicine. And a group of researchers led by UCLA scientists just may have discovered exactly that. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe an early proof-of-concept study on a chemical they call LJ001. The chemical attacks the structure of viruses themselves, and may potentially cure a wide swath of disease ranging from influenza...

Research published in the journal Genetics suggests that mutagenic drugs designed to kill viruses may make them strongerAs the flu season continues in full-swing, most people can appreciate the need for drugs that stop viruses after they take hold in the body. Despite this serious need for new drugs, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin raise serious concerns about an emerging strategy for stopping viral infections. According to their research report appearing in the January 2010 issue of the journal GENETICS, medications that cause viruses to die off by forcing their nucleic acid to mutate...

Swine flu 'could kill millions unless rich nations give £900m' UN report says pandemic may result in anarchy unless western world pays for antiviral drugs and vaccines

An unlicensed intravenous form of the antiviral drug Relenza saved the life of a woman with a severe illness resulting from infection by the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus, British doctors reported today in the journal Lancet. Dr. Michael Kidd and Dr. Mervyn Singer of the University College London Hospitals were treating the virus, commonly known as swine flu, in a 22-year-old woman who had contracted it after undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease. The woman had increasing shortness of breath, build-up of fluid in both lungs and was progressively deteriorating. Physicians had given her Tamiflu and Relenza, which is normally given...

Australian pharmaceutical firm, Biota, has said that Phase III trials of its new influenza drug laninamivir (CS-8958) have shown that a single inhaled dose of the drug was as effective as 10 doses of Roche’s Tamiflu administered orally over a 5 day period. The drug is a second generation neuraminidase inhibitor and is based on zanamivir, the active ingredient in Relenza, which Biota sold to GlaxoSmithKline. The study was conducted by Japanese pharma firm Daiichi Sankyo, which co-owns the drug, and included 1000 patients that had confirmed, naturally acquired influenza A or B. Preclinical studies have shown laninamivir to be...

Almost 90 per cent of the world's population will not have timely access to affordable supplies of vaccines and antiviral agents in the current influenza pandemic, but it is possible that inexpensive generic drugs that are readily available, even in developing countries, could save millions of lives. > "At a scientific meeting in 2008 we heard that all of the people who developed bird flu in Indonesia, and did not receive antiviral treatment, died. This observation is terrifying. If this particular virus were to develop efficient human-to-human transmission we could see a global population collapse. >

Australia must continue to shun a US-led holy war against AIDS, writes Bill Bowtell. The detection in New York City of a new strain of HIV virus that is highly resistant to anti-retroviral drugs is deeply worrying. If the existence of an HIV supervirus is confirmed by tests now being performed by the HIV authority Dr David Ho and others, then there will be genuine grounds for concern about whether existing HIV containment strategies are working, or need to be radically overhauled to meet the potential threat of a new strain of the virus. These questions are important and must...