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: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:31AM
An obese man with a bowl haircut sat on a couch in an ordinary living room. Rolls of fat on his face, neck, and body jiggled whenever he moved. The man's name was Jackson. As Jackson was lazing around, his doorbell rang. "I wonder who that could be..." Jackson muttered.
Jackson waddled to the door and opened it. What he saw filled him with surprise and delight. Girl Scout Cookies. A small girl was going door-to-door selling Girl Scout Cookies; this was unusual, but fortuitous. It was Jackson's favorite. The man immediately seized upon the opportunity and went back into his house with the items.
Jackson had freshened up in order to get ready for the main course. He had all of his usual tools in this room, and everything was ready. Jackson couldn't wait to begin. "Hehe! It's been a while since I've had one that matched my preferences this well!" the man said jubilantly. Then, he began. She cried. She screamed. She squealed. She convulsed. She broke. Her hands fell limply to the ground. She showed no signs of moving ever again.
"Damn! I got so excited that I forgot how fragile these are! I'll have to be more careful next time so it doesn't break too quickly." said Jackson, as he shoveled Girl Scout Cookies into his mouth. "These rot all too quickly, so I'd better dispose of it properly." the man said. Jackson, being an upstanding member of his community, discarded the item into a trash can and put it out to the side of the road for trash pickup day.
The last person to ever see the little girl who sold cookies to Jackson was the garbage man.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday February 26 2018, @02:03PM (12 children)
Does this work on all strains of flu? If this drug could be distributed and applied worldwide in a massive global effort, maybe we could finally send influenza to join smallpox in extinction.
A quick google says that the global annual cost of influenza is around $10b. Let's imagine that's our budget to eliminate it. We can save the human race a bunch of unnecessary deaths, AND $10b per year. Could it be done?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:18PM (1 child)
Key words: "contain flu symptoms"
Mm hmm... if you want "contain flu symptoms" then take 2 hyrdocodone. I guarantee you will be feeling all better in less than an hour.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday February 26 2018, @02:27PM
Maybe, but
If you can stop ill people sneezing and snotting all over the damn place, it won't spread.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Monday February 26 2018, @03:40PM (1 child)
Provided it really does quickly make people non-infectious, and doesn't suppress the symptoms so people can go to work and share their virus around... Plus, if it does work, I bet they'll charge whatever they can get for it. Think of the cost to the honey & lemon-flavoured placebo industry if flu and colds were actually wiped out!
Maybe, instead, stop the advertising for all these super-ultra-strength flu-suppressants that suggests that it's your duty as a good worker to dose yourself up and turn up at that "important" meeting like one of the living dead and give the gift of flu to your colleagues...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday February 26 2018, @06:22PM
Maybe, instead, stop the advertising for all these super-ultra-strength flu-suppressants that suggests that it's your duty as a good worker to dose yourself up and turn up at that "important" meeting like one of the living dead and give the gift of flu to your colleagues...
I'm sorry, I think this is a load of crap. The pharma companies aren't the ones pushing you to go to work while sick; they're just responding to a market opportunity, providing a product that enables people to do better something they already do. The problem is the very culture of the country, which pushes people to go to work while sick and spread the disease around. I'm sure most workers would much prefer to stay at home, but they know that it's going to look bad to the boss if they do, and this will hurt them in their job, so it really is better for them to go to work and get others sick. If you're looking for someone to blame, blame the bosses and management in general, and the overall culture of the country.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @05:33PM (4 children)
No.
The drugs are antivirals, influenza spreads before people are symptomatic, and there are many animal reservoirs (mainly birds, but also pigs and horses).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 26 2018, @07:31PM (3 children)
So if the treatment kills the viruses within 24 hours as claimed, why not use it profilactically?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @08:09PM (2 children)
There are already strains of influenza that are resistant to Tamiflu and it would be incredibly unlikely that this other drug would be targeting a region of the virus that is present in all strains and that wouldn't be able to mutate.
The drug itself is an inhibitor and will not "kill" the virus, so viral clearance is dependent upon the the immune system of the host. Prophylactic treatment would also have to be effective in wild birds, horses, dogs, and other non-human reservoirs.
(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]