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: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday February 27 2018, @04:27AM (1 child)
Tamiflu is at least somewhat effective against parvovirus in dogs.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:46AM
I'm a bit skeptical of that claim, but I don't know enough about the parvovirus lifecycle to exclude a role for sialic acid in it.
Influenza is an enveloped, segmented negative sense RNA virus and parvoviruses are naked, single stranded DNA viruses. I don't remember there being a neurominidase enzyme in parvoviruses, so if there's an effect it is more likely to be through an indirect mechanism.
This paper mentions that the effect is inconclusive:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20230441 [nih.gov]