Herpes Simplex? Might be a cure in the wings...

[Justforfun000]

As most people here probably know, Herpes is considered incurable because it enters a dormancy phase just like Chicken Pox, and therefore becomes untouchable by the immune system or medication. Only active virus can be killed. This annoying problem has potentially been solved:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113809.php

Discovery Explains How Cold Sore Virus Hides During Inactive Phase
03 Jul 2008

Now that Duke University Medical Center scientists have figured out how the virus that causes cold sores hides out, they may have a way to wake it up and kill it.

Cold sores, painful, unsightly blemishes around the mouth, have so far evaded a cure or even prevention. They're known to be caused by the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV1), which lies dormant in the trigeminal nerve of the face until triggered to reawaken by excessive sunlight, fever, or other stresses.

"We have provided a molecular understanding of how HSV1 hides and then switches back and forth between the latent (hidden) and active phases," said Bryan Cullen, Duke professor of molecular genetics and microbiology.

His group's findings, published in Nature, also provide a framework for studying other latent viruses, such as the chicken pox virus, which can return later in life as a case of shingles, and herpes simplex 2 virus, a genitally transmitted virus that also causes painful sores, Cullen said.

Most of the time, HSV1 lives quietly for years, out of reach of any therapy we have against it. It does not replicate itself during this time and only produces one molecular product, called latency associated transcript RNA or LAT RNA.

"It has always been a mystery what this product, LAT RNA, does," Cullen said. "Usually viral RNAs exist to make proteins that are of use to the virus, but this LAT RNA is extremely unstable and does not make any proteins."

In studies of mice, the team showed that the LAT RNA is processed into smaller strands, called microRNAs, that block production of the proteins that make the virus turn on active replication. As long as the supply of microRNAs is sufficient, the virus stays dormant.

After a larger stress, however, the virus starts making more messenger RNA than the supply of microRNAs can block, and protein manufacturing begins again. This tips the balance, and the virus ultimately makes proteins that begin active viral replication.

The new supply of viruses then travels back down the trigeminal nerve, to the site of the initial infection at the mouth. A cold sore always erupts in the same place and is the source of viruses that might infect another person, either from direct contact, or sharing eating utensils or towels, Cullen said.

The approach to curing this nuisance would be a combination therapy, Cullen said. "Inactive virus is completely untouchable by any treatment we have. Unless you activate the virus, you can't kill it," he said.

Cullen and his team are testing a new drug designed to very precisely bind to the microRNAs that keep the virus dormant. If it works, the virus would become activated and start replicating.

Once the virus is active, a patient would then take acyclovir, a drug that effectively kills replicating HSV1.

"In principle, you could activate and then kill all of the virus in a patient," Cullen said. "This would completely cure a person, and you would never get another cold sore."

He and the team are working with drug development companies in animal trials to begin to answer questions about how to deliver this drug most effectively.

----------------------------
Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
----------------------------

Co-authors included Jennifer Lin Umbach, Ph.D., and Heather W. Karnowski, B.S., of the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and Center for Virology, and Martha F. Kramer, Igor Jurak, and Prof. Donald M. Coen of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. This work was supported by two NIH grants.

Source: Mary Jane Gore
Duke University Medical Center

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113809.php

Main News Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses

Also Appears In: Dermatology, Genetics, Biology / Biochemistry,

Would this technique also be effective towards HIV? I thought I recall it having the same problem...or is it not that it's dormant but unreachable because of the type of cells it also hides in...?

[Broomstick]

As someone currently nursing an outbreak of cold sores (probably brought on by working outside and not quite laying on the sunscreen perfectly) I would be very much in favor of a genuine cure. Cold sores aren't killers but they are fucking annoying and painful.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There's always been a cure for viruses, just not one that would allow the host to live.

This may show promise with Herpes and similar latent stage based viral infections, possibly even having an off-shoot going after any protozoa caused maladies too. But it isn't going to get HIV. HIV is a beast I don't see anything really touching any time soon, if at all. The mechanism is just too perfect.

[Broomstick]

There's always been a cure for viruses, just not one that would allow the host to live.

That's a little like saying arson is a cure for dirty, cluttered house.

May I also add that there is the major suckage of a mild fever and tired feeling that also comes with a cold sore flare up? I really don't need this, as my days have about 10-12 hours of scheduled activities in them right now, but at least tomorrow is a holiday and I can get some extra rest.

I'm slacking off today, because I know from experience that my stamina is taking a hit - I'm "only" baking bread (which came out wonderful, by the way), cleaning the kitchen, processing and freezing the meat I bought yesterday, taking out the garbage, and working a full shift. The garden can just wait another day, as can a bunch of other shit like getting an unemployment extension (wonder how hard they had to twist Bush's arm to get him to sign that?), scheduling a medical appointment, putting my paychecks in the bank, and hitting that one store that has items I can't get anywhere else around here.

Yeah, I could use a cure for cold sores right about now.... What I could also use is to be tucked into bed for a noontime nap, fed chicken soup, pampered, and told I'm beautiful despite the oozing nasty sore on my upper lip.

[Admiral Valdemar]

No common cold cure in Trek, nor even for baldness or obesity. Therefore, we're screwed.

[Justforfun000]

This may show promise with Herpes and similar latent stage based viral infections, possibly even having an off-shoot going after any protozoa caused maladies too. But it isn't going to get HIV. HIV is a beast I don't see anything really touching any time soon, if at all. The mechanism is just too perfect.

I think this is a far too pessimistic viewpoint. I just read another article that discovered what seems to be the genetic difference that branched us off from monkeys and how they kept the resistance to retroviruses like HIV while we lost it. We ended up with other resistances however. There is always something of a trade off it seems...

But in any event the important thing to remember is that our immune capabilities keep evolving even when we don't do a blessed thing to directly interfere. The propogation of the species will naturally force us to adapt to living with HIV and eventually I would think we'd become immune to it's harmful nature.

But I'm also hoping that we can become advanced enough to tip the scales in our favour and eventually discover a radical new concept enabling us to target the virus without harming ourselves. Lets not give up hope...

At least they now say that other then a somewhat increased risk of cancer, people with HIV can expect almost the same lifespan as an uninfected person with proper care. This article just addressed it:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/HIVAIDS/HIVAIDS/tb/9930

HIV Life Expectancy Approaching Normal
By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: June 27, 2008
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Earn CME/CE credit
for reading medical news


NEW YORK, June 27 -- In the early days of the HIV pandemic, patients could expect only a few years between diagnosis and a final fatal AIDS-associated illness.

Now, people with HIV in the developed world are living long enough that other causes of death -- such as cardiovascular disease -- are starting to assume an ever-greater importance. (See CVD Risk Highlighted in HIV-Positive People)

Indeed, some physicians counsel new patients that they can expect an essentially normal lifespan -- as long as they keep taking their HIV medication and don't drop dead of something else. Action Points
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Explain to interested patients that without treatment, HIV leads almost universally to AIDS, in which a range of so-called AIDS-defining illnesses can be fatal.


Note that highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), introduced in 1996, caused an immediate and precipitous decline in HIV/AIDS mortality.


Explain that many people with HIV can now expect to live into their 60s, as long as they adhere to their medication regimens.
At the 2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto, for instance, Stefano Vella, M.D., a former president of the International AIDS Society, told reporters: "Today, I can tell my patients with HIV that they can have a normal life expectancy."


The most recent analyses show that Dr. Vella is wrong -- but not by much.


A computer simulation, using data from U.S. sources, calculated the median lifespan of an adult entering HIV care to be 24.2 years, according to Bruce Schackman, Ph.D., of Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and colleagues. The study appeared in Medical Care in November 2006.


In the study, the median age for entering care was 39, which yields a potential lifespan of 63 years, Dr. Schackman said. On the other hand, a 39-year-old without HIV can probably expect to live well into his or her 70s, he said.


In fact, according to the CDC's national Vital Statistics Report, issued June 11, a 40-year-old American can expect to live another 40.2 years.


"There's still a gap," Dr. Schackman said, but it's a far cry from 1993, when one study estimated a lifespan of just 6.4 years for an HIV patient entering care with a CD4 T cell count of about 500 cells per microliter of plasma.


The major difference is highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Its use began in 1996 and it caused an immediate and precipitous decline in HIV/AIDS mortality, Dr. Schackman said.


But even compared with the first years of HAART, that 24.2 years is a huge jump: a 1997 analysis suggested that the early HAART regimens would add only four years of life expectancy.


By 2006, however, the number of drugs available had expanded and their ease of use -- often a barrier -- had increased, to the point where some patients are able to suppress HIV replication with just one pill a day.


Indeed, Dr. Schackman said, the available drugs and drug regimens "have only gotten better since then."


In an analysis that took a different tack, researchers in British Columbia looked at the life expectancy of a 20-year-old starting HAART in one of three periods -- 1996 through 1999, 2000 through 2002, and from 2003 through 2005.


Rather than using a simulated cohort, as Dr. Schackman and colleagues did, Robert Hogg, M.D., of the University of British Columbia and colleagues looked at more than 26,000 people who started HAART in those periods.


As might be expected, they found that the years of life available to their standardized 20-year-old increased over time -- from 24.3 years in the earliest period to 27.1 in 2000-2002 and 33.2 in 2003-2005.


Living to your early 50s is a far cry from a normal life span, but it is a far cry from not making it out of your 20s.


Dr. Hogg and colleagues reported their findings at the 2007 Conference in Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held a few months after Dr. Schackman and colleagues published their analysis.


Although the exact figures aren't identical to those of Dr. Schackman -- and the starting point of care is different -- they're in the same ballpark.


But even the 24 years suggested by the computer simulation is probably an underestimate, if you consider only medication issues, Dr. Schackman said.


"We were being overly conservative by not considering the fact that innovation will continue in the future," he said. "We could only focus on the technology that existed in 2006, but 24 years from now, there will probably be many new ideas."


In another analysis by Dr. Schackman and colleagues, antiretroviral medications accounted for 70% of the lifetime costs of HIV medical care.


On the other hand, Dr. Schackman said, the researchers also did not consider some of the implications of a long life with HIV -- such as the increased risk of cardiovascular disease.


Indeed attendees at the 2006 AIDS meeting were told that 9% of HIV patients now die from heart disease, 15% from liver disease, and 8% from cancer.


The interaction between HIV, the medications, and the human body is still not well understood and it will require years of study on large numbers of patients to work out the details, Dr. Schackman said.


"There may be things about HIV disease itself that affect the risk of other chronic diseases," he said, and what those are will only emerge with time.


Luckily, for people with HIV who have access to HAART, time is what they have.


The study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Schackman did not report any conflicts.

[LadyTevar]

I'm with Broomstick, gimme the cure to the ColdSore.

I have been lucky, my coldsores rise up and vanish within 48 hrs. My mother's had them last for 3 weeks.

[Molyneux]

I have a cold sore or two that pops up now and then, but I've been freaked about them for years, especially the worry over giving them to someone else. Sign me up for this thing.

[SecondStorm]

As someone who usually suffers at least yearly from Herpes Simplex Id love a cure.

Any new "acquintance" oftens brings on a new episode of Herpes.

[kc8tbe]

I work in a lab that, among other things, is engineering HSV for use as an anticancer therapy. A few points:

1. HSV1 is not as harmless as you might think, especially if you are immunocompromised. It can, for example, infect the cornea, necessitating a corneal transplant. It can also migrate from the trigeminal nerve to the brain, and has been implicated in Alzheimers.

2. Oncolytic virus labs have done experiments with LAT deficient HSV (Herpes Simplex engineered so that it cannot enter the latent phase) in immunocompetent mice, and results suggest that the mice may remain infected with HSV even 80 days after inoculation. The scientists in the OP may have found a way of blocking wildtype HSV from entering the latent phase, but that doesn't mean they've found a way to cure it. More research will need to be done.

3. The problem with HIV isn't so much that it enters a latent phase (although it is capable of doing so), but rather that it mutates so quickly that the immune system has trouble keeping up with it.

All that said, kudos to these researchers and I do hope they find a cure for Herpes.

[Themightytom]

No common cold cure in Trek, nor even for baldness or obesity. Therefore, we're screwed.

what the... why is baldness a disease?

[Molyneux]

No common cold cure in Trek, nor even for baldness or obesity. Therefore, we're screwed.

what the... why is baldness a disease?

It most certainly is annoying. It can lead to problems with, say, sunburn (or worse, skin cancer) on the scalp, but...yeah, not really a disease. More a 'condition', I guess.