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In mice, the treatment decreased infections caused by the Influenza A virus:
Inhaling low concentrations of ethanol vapor can disable the influenza A virus in mice, without harmful side effects, says a new study by scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). The scientists believe it may also treat similar viruses such as the one that causes Covid-19.
[...] "Ethanol is an effective disinfectant for body surfaces, so we wanted to know whether ethanol could also be effective inside the body," said Dr. Miho Tamai, a scientist in Prof. Ishikawa's lab.
Using a humidifier to produce ethanol vapor in a small container, they found that when mice infected with influenza A inhale the vapor for ten minutes, the virus is inactivated. The study is published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Influenza A viruses accumulate in a thin fluid layer covering lung cells that protect the surface of the airway. The scientists think that the ethanol vapor must increase ethanol concentrations in the fluid to 20% to successfully treat the infection. This concentration is not toxic to lung cells the scientists created in the lab to mimic human cells. At body temperature, 20% ethanol can not only inactivate the influenza A virus outside of the cells in one minute, but also stop the virus from replicating inside these cells.
[...] Influenza A is a virus that has an outer membrane, called an envelope. "Ethanol vapor may also inactivate other enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2," Prof. Ishikawa said, and so far, all viruses that have caused pandemics have been enveloped. "Once the next pandemic happens, maybe we can quickly apply the ethanol vapor inhalation therapy to prevent or cure the disease," he explained.
[...] The researchers believe that ethanol vapor inhalation treatment has great potential as a versatile and cost-effective new therapy against various respiratory infectious diseases. But Prof. Ishikawa cautioned that people should not try using ethanol as a therapy on their own. "That may lead to serious side-effects or explosion risks," he said. "The efficacy and safety of this new treatment on humans and other mammals should be carefully evaluated in the future."
Journal Reference:
Miho Tamai et al., Effect of Ethanol Vapor Inhalation Treatment on Lethal Respiratory Viral Infection With Influenza A, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2023; https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiad089
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday June 06, @06:59PM
Maintaining some people on a habit is hard, because some people have a tendency to chase the highs they got when they first took the drug, and end up taking greater and greater doses.
There are plenty of documented case reports of people (often medical doctors) maintaining a heroin habit for decades: but I suspect they are a minority, and it is aberrant behaviour - enough self control to not keep increasing the dose. I could be wrong: many, if not most drinkers of alcohol have sufficient self control to not become alcoholics, so it is plausible that the same could be true for users of heroin - but I've not seen any data on that.
I firmly believe drugs policy should be founded on evidence-based harm reduction, not punishment. However, I am in a minority. A lot of moral judgements come into play when dealing with drug consumption.