Can herpes be defeated?
A medicine for a rare disease was called promising for getting rid of herpes
Olga Ivanova, Naked Science
Scientists from the USA conducted experiments on mice and found out that a drug that treats a rare disease of metabolic disorders can be effective in the treatment of herpes.
The results of the study are published in the journal Science Advances (Yadavalli et al., Standalone or combinatorial phenylbutyrate therapy shows excellent antiviral activity and mimics CREB3 silencing). Herpes simplex is caused by two types of viruses – HSV-1 and HSV-2. The most common is the so–called labial form of infection - a rash on the lips, which is popularly called a "cold". In second place in prevalence is genital herpes, affecting mainly the genitals. HSV-1 virus usually causes infections of the mouth, neck, face, eyes and central nervous system, and HSV-2 – genital area.
Effective treatment of herpes does not exist today. The most well-known acyclovir-based drugs help to cope with the disease, but not as productively as we would like. In addition, acyclovir is extremely toxic to the kidneys – especially in high doses, which have to be prescribed to people with a chronic form of the disease and frequent relapses, or with encephalitis caused by the herpes virus. Long-term treatment with acyclovir leads to virus resistance to the drug.
Scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA) conducted a study on mice and found that a drug designed to treat hyperammonemia, a metabolic disorder with a manifestation of a disorder of the urea enzyme cycle (caused by ammonia poisoning), proved to be "excellent" against herpes simplex viruses, according to them. The active substance of the drug – sodium phenylbutyrate – is a salt of aromatic fatty acid.
As experts have found out, this drug disrupts the ability of the virus to capture the cellular mechanisms necessary for the production of its proteins (for replication of the infectious agent). At the same time, the cell is simultaneously forced to produce proteins for its own needs. The drug studied by scientists allowed the cell to focus on destroying the virus on its own, reducing the stress load on it.
Sodium phenylbutyrate was able to remove the virus from mouse cells, which acyclovir is also capable of. However, the best result was achieved with a combination of these two drugs – infectious agents were removed faster and more efficiently. And the combination of both substances showed one hundred percent survival in mice infected with herpetic encephalitis, which could not be achieved by using the same substances separately. Thus, scientists believe that sodium phenylbutyrate can become a good alternative to acyclovir and help reduce its side effects. Of course, human clinical trials are needed for final conclusions.
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