antivirus?

[alchemy]

Hi

we have already created antibiotics that can kill or slow down bacteria so my question is. Is it possible to creat an antivirus to kill or slow down virus?

if so any idea y haven't we created any yet?

 

maybe this is a stupid question?

[Dak]

Antibiotics usually work by inhibiting bacterial metabolism or by disrupting bacterial cell walls; the chemicals that attack them do so by affecting molecules found only in bacterial cells, and not in human cells (such as peptidoglycan, a component of bacterial cell walls but absent from human cells)

 

Viruses have no metabolism to inhibit, and unlike bacteria i dont think that there are any components of the virus shell that are common to all viruses, thus leaving no target of attack for a viral-shell-disruptor thingy.

 

Chemicals can be made to attack specific viruses, but not viruses in general due to their lack of common identifying features.

[alchemy]

i see

[Helix]

Picking up from what Dak said, anti-virals do exist and are custom made for each virus. But they also might have to be made for each strain if they are unique enough. Even then, viral evolution is such that an anti-viral wouldn't be that effective for long. Viruses are very very messy when the transcribe their RNA and so a lot of mutation creep in, speeding up evolution.

[NPK]

We have a number of anti-virals...eg. acyclovir (Zovirax) for HHV1; tamiflu and relenza for influenza viruses. As Dak said, these are specific drugs rather than general viral drugs (there are many types of viruses with different nucleic acid types, genes and structures).

[tejaswini]

as npk said we do have a number of anti viral drugs, but usually vaccination is prefered in case of viral diseases.probably the effects are better in case of vaccination.