Hi,
It's the simple questions that are the good ones.
I don't know the answer but I am very interested in finding out. It's my
understanding that all the drugs we have to combat viruses merely slow the
spread of the virus down which lets the rate at which our immune system
hunts the virus down outpace the rate at which it spreads. I think the
closest we can get to a "cure" is having a drug that will slow down the
spread of the virus to a crawl.
Another approach is to target proteins produced solely by the virus
leaving your bodies endogenic proteins untouched. If the proteins are
critical for the virus to spread, you have a cure. There are drugs that do
this but I'm not aware of any that work so well as to rid the body
completely of any virus without the use of your host immune system, which
probably doesn't count as a cure. I'd be shocked to hear that we can cure
a virus without the help of our own immune system (and I'm not sure that
counts strictly as a cure).
-Erik
ecoronap from stanford.edu
I'm not aware of drugs that On Thu, 4 Sep 2008, Lin Andis wrote:
> I am confused maybe you can help me sort it out.
>>>> Has medical science ever found a "cure" for a virus? Any virus? I know we
> have vaccines for them
at least I think we do
isn't polio and smallpox a
> virus. What about chicken-pox and measles and all those childhood diseases
> that we get only once? We are "vaccinated" by getting the virus and
> creating our own antibodies (like the article said). Right? And does all of
> this mean that we will probably not find a "cure" but rather a "vaccine" for
> Aids?
>>> I hope I haven't ask too many questions, and hope I am email the right
> person, thanks in advance for they help
if you aren't the person that I am
> looking for; maybe you could put me in touch with someone that could answer
> my questions.
>> Inquiringly, Lin
>linasmuch from gmail.com>> I found your email on this website
>http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/biomail/listinfo/microbio>
