IN THE medical armoury vaccines are a wonderful piece of ammunition. But they are like bullets that can hit one target only. Different vaccines are needed to prevent specific viral infections. If a person is already ill, vaccines won’t help. Various antiviral drugs might, shortening the time people are ill or preventing serious complications. The trouble is viruses are a moving target because they can evolve rapidly. Researchers have tinkered with some antiviral treatments that might work against a wide spectrum of diseases, but all have had shortcomings. Now one group thinks they have found a method that might protect cells in the body from a viral invasion.
The new research, led by James Hedrick of the IBM Almaden Research Center in California, Naoki Yamamoto of the National University of Singapore and Yi Yan Yang of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, also in Singapore, stems from an old tactic that has been problematic in the past. All viruses depend upon similar electrical charges at their surfaces to connect to the cells that they are trying to infect. If the charges on viruses and cells could somehow be meddled with, it should make things harder for the virus to infect the host.
Lots of experiments have demonstrated that the theory is sound. Unfortunately, many of the materials used to interfere with the electrical charges have...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/245Pn25
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