anti-viral drug

Examples of anti-viral drug in the following topics:

• Vaccines and Anti-Viral Drugs for Treatment

  • Vaccines and anti-viral drugs can be used to inhibit the virus and reduce symptoms in individuals suffering from viral infections.
  • Anti-HIV drugs have been able to control viral replication to the point that individuals receiving these drugs survive for a significantly longer time than the untreated.
  • Anti-HIV drugs inhibit viral replication at many different phases of the HIV replicative cycle .
  • The breakthrough in the treatment of HIV was the development of HAART, highly-active anti-retroviral therapy, which involves a mixture of different drugs, sometimes called a drug "cocktail."
  • Thus, new anti-HIV drugs are constantly being developed with the hope of continuing the battle against this highly fatal virus.

• Steps of Virus Infections

  • Viral infection involves the incorporation of viral DNA into a host cell, replication of that material, and the release of the new viruses.
  • The viral mRNA directs the host cell to synthesize viral enzymes and capsid proteins, and to assemble new virions.
  • The fact that HIV produces some of its own enzymes not found in the host has allowed researchers to develop drugs that inhibit these enzymes.
  • These drugs, including the reverse transcriptase inhibitor AZT, inhibit HIV replication by reducing the activity of the enzyme without affecting the host's metabolism.
  • This approach has led to the development of a variety of drugs used to treat HIV and has been effective at reducing the number of infectious virions (copies of viral RNA) in the blood to non-detectable levels in many HIV-infected individuals.

• Animal Viruses

  • The viral genome is then "injected" into the host cell through these channels in a manner analogous to that used by many bacteriophages.
  • Examples of acute viral diseases are the common cold and influenza.
  • The damage is so low that infected individuals are often unaware that they are infected, with many infections only detected by routine blood work on patients with risk factors such as intravenous drug use.
  • Since many of the symptoms of viral diseases are caused by immune responses, a lack of symptoms is an indication of a weak immune response to the virus.
  • As the virus "hides" in the tissue and makes few if any viral proteins, there is nothing for the immune response to act against; immunity to the virus slowly declines.

• Vaccines and Immunity

  • While we do have limited numbers of effective antiviral drugs, such as those used to treat HIV and influenza, the primary method of controlling viral disease is by vaccination, which is intended to prevent outbreaks by building immunity to a virus or virus family .
  • The killed viral vaccines and subunit viruses are both incapable of causing disease.
  • Live viral vaccines are designed in the laboratory to cause few symptoms in recipients while giving them protective immunity against future infections.

• Cancer and Translational Control

  • Many scientists are designing drugs on the basis of the gene expression patterns within individual tumors.
  • One such example is the use of anti-EGF receptor medications to treat the subset of breast cancer tumors that have very high levels of the EGF protein.

• Pathogen Recognition

  • A function an interferons is to inhibit viral replication, making them particularly effective against viruses.
  • A hypersensitive immune response to harmless antigens, such as in pollen, often involves the release of histamine by basophils and mast cells; this is why many anti-allergy medications are anti-histamines.

• Other Hormonal Controls for Osmoregulation

  • Angiotensin II also triggers the release of anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) from the hypothalamus, leading to water retention in the kidneys.
  • Medically, blood pressure can be controlled by drugs that inhibit ACE (called ACE inhibitors).

• Genomics and Proteomics

  • Certain proteins in the cancerous cell may not be present in the healthy cell, making these unique proteins good targets for anti-cancer drugs.

• Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Mental Illnesses

  • Treatment for the disease usually requires anti-psychotic medications that work by blocking dopamine receptors and decreasing dopamine neurotransmission in the brain.
  • While some classes of anti-psychotics can be quite effective at treating the disease, they are not a cure; most patients must remain medicated for the rest of their lives.
  • Other types of drugs, such as norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors and norepinephrine-serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are also used to treat depression.

• Horizontal Gene Transfer

  • Furthermore, fungal species feeding on yew trees, from which the anti-cancer drug TAXOL® is derived from the bark, have acquired the ability to make taxol themselves; a clear example of gene transfer.