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https://www.wsj.com/articles/experimental-drug-promises-to-kill-the-flu-virus-in-a-day-1518264004
As Americans suffer through the worst influenza outbreak in almost a decade, a Japanese drugmaker says it has developed a pill that can kill the virus within a day. But even if the experimental drug lives up to the claim, it likely won't be available in the U.S. until next year at the earliest.
A late-stage trial on Japanese and American flu patients found that for the people who took the Shionogi 4507 1.41% & Co. compound, the median time taken to wipe out the virus was 24 hours. That is much quicker than any other flu drug on the market, including Roche AG's RHHBY -0.34% Tamiflu, which the trial showed took three times longer to achieve the same result. Quickly killing the virus could reduce its contagious effects, Shionogi said.
Also, Shionogi's experimental drug requires only a single dose, while patients need to take two doses of Tamiflu a day, for five days.
Both Shionogi's compound and Tamiflu take roughly the same amount of time to entirely contain flu symptoms, but Shionogi says its compound provides immediate relief faster.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Monday February 26 2018, @03:52PM (2 children)
The smallpox has a severe weakness that we exploited the crap out of, it wasn't a zoonotic*. Influenza (especially H7N7) is a zoonotic.
(* able to jump species)
You know how we call it "avian flu" and "the swine flu" that is in which host animal it mutated into a form that leaped to humans, and that process is ongoing.
But yeah, we could eradicate it, we only need to dose pretty much every warmblooded animal on the planet for it (flu is common among seals for instance).
However - shoveling 10bn per year into a single global vaccination project would be a good idea, especially if about half of it was spent on mainly trying to find/procur vaccines for the stuff we can eradicate with (relative) ease.
(Could actually be one heck of a bounty - decide on one disease per year and offer a 5bn bounty to whatever company that invents a safe and deployable method to eradicate it, use the other 5bn/year on manufacturing and deployment)
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 26 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:29AM
This can be easily remedied by testing the treatment on less than 100% of the population first.