Measles medicine successfully tested on ferrets
The first drug for the prevention and treatment of measles has been developed
Copper news
The first antiviral anti-measles drug developed by an international group of scientists has shown good results when tested on an animal model. It suppresses the replication of the measles pathogen virus and, in case of successful human trials, will be able to be used to alleviate the symptoms of patients and prevent them from infecting others. The work was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine: Krumm et al., An Orally Available, Small-Molecule Polymerase Inhibitor Shows Efficacy Against a Lethal Morbillivirus Infection in a Large Animal Mode l. (The press release of Researchers Have Developed A New Antiviral Drug To Combat Measles Outbreaks can be read on the website of the University of Georgia – VM.)
The drug ERRP-0519 is an inhibitor of RNA polymerase - a key replication factor – of morbilliviruses, which include the causative agent of measles. The developers of the drug, biomedicine specialists from the University of Georgia, the Emory Institute (USA) and the Paul-Ehrlich Institute (Germany) tested it on ferrets intranasally infected with another morbillivirus – the carnivorous plague virus, which usually causes a disease with one hundred percent lethality in these animals – against the background of oral therapy ERRP-0519.
Taking the drug significantly reduced the degree of viremia (the spread of the virus through the bloodstream through the body) and allowed the animals not only to survive, but also to acquire persistent immunity to the disease. Ferrets infected with the same dose of the virus, but who started receiving the drug after infection, had a relatively low concentration of the virus in the blood and no symptoms of the disease. All of them survived, while the control group died in its entirety.
The authors suggest that the drug, whose clinical trials are still ahead, can theoretically be used as a means to localize measles outbreaks – it can be taken by people who were in close contact with the patient, to whom such a drug can also facilitate the course of the disease. The researchers emphasize that such a drug will in no way replace vaccination, but will become an additional means of fighting infection.
Currently, there are no drugs for the specific treatment of measles in clinical practice. Despite the worldwide progress in controlling the spread of infection, the statistics of mortality from this disease on the planet has remained constant since 2007 and amounts to about 150 thousand deaths per year. Measles outbreaks occur regularly in all countries of the world, including developed ones, due to the high contagiousness of the infection and the insufficient degree of immunization of the population, primarily due to refusals on the part of parents to vaccinate children.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.04.2014