ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DALLAS
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
It has yet to go up against chicken soup or herbal tea, but a new compound looks as if it may one day cure influenza.
Unfortunately, flu sufferers will have to endure a few more years of sniffles and aches before scientists find out whether their new drug really works.
Researchers today will describe a chemical that appears able to stop the influenza virus from making copies of itself in the body. In animal studies, the new agent was able to relieve influenza symptoms in one day.
``Our compound has proved to be very effective,'' said researcher Dr. Choung Kim of Giliad Sciences Inc., a drug company based in California. Kim and his colleagues describe the new chemical in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The annual winter flu epidemic strikes millions of Americans and is a major cause of lost productivity. It kills about 20,000 people, most of them elderly, and sends many more to the hospital.
Just two drugs are approved specifically to fight influenza. However, they are not effective against all types of flu infection, and, considering the number of people ill, are not widely used. Usually, people stricken with the flu spend about a week in bed with a cough, aches, extreme fatigue and overall misery. Influenza rarely includes nausea or other gastrointestinal symptoms.
``People have accepted, in general, if you have the flu, there's not much you can do,'' Kim said. ``Get some rest, have some tea and eventually go back to work.''
The new compound, which has a number but no name yet, has two potential advantages over the currently available drugs, the researchers say. It would probably be effective against all strains of flu infection, and it is not likely to encourage the development of drug-resistant forms of the virus. The scientists say that so far it also has not shown any major side effects.
``It looks very promising,'' said Dr. Robert Couch of the Influenza Research Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
However, Couch and others cautioned that the drug is still in its infancy, and no one can predict what may happen during further tests. Finding a cure for the flu, he said, ``has been a tough nut to crack.''
Human tests on the new compound should begin this year, but the scientists could not predict when the drug would be widely available.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB