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Posts Tagged ‘what can you do with a viral infection?’

A viral infection is any bodily infection that is caused by a virus instead of being caused by bacterium. Unlike bacterium which can, and do, exist with or without a host, viruses are strictly parasitical and depend on hosts for their survival. In fact, bacteria too face infection from viruses and the bacteriophage is a type of staff infection that specifically targets bacteria as hosts as opposed to larger organisms. Since viruses are so small and relatively simple, they work by infecting and taking over other cells and turning them to reproducing the virus. The result is that viruses are very hard to fight medically because most of their constituent elements come from the host body, so anything that will kill the virus will also kill the host cells.

The most successful means of fighting viruses has been the use of vaccines. Dating back to ancient China, vaccination entails the introduction of dead or inert quantities of the virus as a preventative measure which allows the body to develop a immunological response to it. Then, when a live version of the virus is introduced, the body is prepared and can fight it off. The technique has proven to be successful, from stamping out major, life-threatening viral infections like small pox to your annual flu shots. The problem with vaccination is that it has to be done long before the body is infiltrated by live versions of the virus in order to be successful. Further, since viruses mutate and evolve very quickly, the vaccine inventors are constantly running to catch up with them, meaning that many viruses are simply immune to existing vaccines.

Much more recently has been the development of antiviral drugs. These are drugs that specifically target and kill in the infecting virus. The first antiviral drugs were developed in the 1960s, but the process was extremely slow and inefficient until the 1980s, once the DNA structure of viruses was mapped and studied. Once the scientists learned how the virus operated, they were able to develop the first fully effective antiviral drugs. However, since viruses evolve quickly and most of their substance comes from the host organism, trying to find the right part to attack, specifically those parts of the virus are exclusive to it and not the host, remains challenging. There are currently dozens of antiviral drugs available, but they are very specifically designed for specific viruses, unlike antibiotics that can kill a wide range of bacterium.

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