It seems the technique could be used to stop the virus from spreading from cell to cell inside the patient, so, pretty much, it appears very close to a cure.
It might be able to arrest an infection's internal spread to other tissues and cells, but the virus would still live in existing infected cells. They'd have to find the therapeutic levels necessary to "cleanse the blood", and do clinical trials to look for side-effects (since they'll've introduced a solution of foreign bodies into the bloodstream). It might be that the levels to cleanse the blood are too high in most cases to be economically or therapeutically viable; or maybe not.
Is this supposed to be a cure or a treatment? It seems like to be a cure it would have to catch every instance of the virus in the body, which seems like it would be hard
Isn't this treatment good news for everyone with a persistent viral infection? Shouldn't we be able to reverse a large class of viruses with similar methods?
While this treatment course doesn't appear to be without serious side effects or scale well let's not lose sight of the real win here. Reinforcing that a cure is possible.
"The surprise success now confirms that a cure for H.I.V. infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said."
Sounds very promising; but my guess is limited used in vivo. If it works as explained, would be wildly successful at limiting the spread of HPV if used in condoms and lubricants. In Vivo, to cure viruses like HIV, it would also need to wake up and destroy infected T-Cells that make up a person’s viral reservoir. Without that, the infection persists. however, would be very useful for people who have to overcome multiple forms of resistance to several HAART drugs before they can become undetectable.
Funny, this article says 'they don't know why it works'. I remember the doctor saying that as well. "We are not sure what it is. But we know the virus responds to it and has been effective." So, maybe that was it?
it seems to have antiviral properties which reduce the virus load in a patient ( if taken soon enough). I recommend the ihu marseille videos on youtube from mid/late 2020 at the time when the debate was heating over his protocol.
Warning : the main guy has a huge ego and likes to be contrarian, but the institute does legitimate science on real patients, together with other professors in his team.
tl;dr: It's a chemical called nitric oxide. You spray it up your nose and it is supposed to render most viral particles inert. Here's a quote from that article you should probably be aware of:
> She acknowledged that the experiments took place outside the human body, in test tubes, and do not provide definitive proof of how effective the spray will prove in nasal passages
So yeah... not exactly a miracle cure, in my layman opinion. Even if it does prove efficacious in human nostrils, it won't do much for, for example, mouth-breathers.
The virus is gone from her system. The MM is not at undetectable levels. So unfortunately, this OV is not a cure. This particular patient, her MM cells aren't surging just yet.
I think the curative approach will ultimately come from immunotherapy, training the body to attack the cells. OV could certainly have it's place, for example as an alternative to ASCT.
Of course there's upside — if it really does cure all viral diseases it could be a trillion-dollar pill. Not to mention they'd want to introduce it before the competition.
What's probably working against it is it sounds too good to be true.
It's a treatment that stops viral replication within four days. It might not shut down cytokine storm, but if administered earlier, it stops replication which would be a cure if it works. Biotechs tend to avoid the word cure early on, you'll see the word treatment, because cure is a word that's hard to define and often meaningless or with blurry boundaries.
Looks interesting but so far only talks about using it as prophylactic via inhalation; however the virus is known to enter via mouth, eyes and anus as well (breaks in skin probably). Even so inhalation and touching to mouth are likely the most common vectors of infection, so seems promising.
There is significant evidence that it prevents you getting the disease. That's the 95% efficacy everyone is talking about. Whether or not it fully prevents spreading has not been tested yet, but early signs sound positive.
To those who aren't aware of it, the reason someone thought to try this is that this type of drug has shown intermittent promise in treating viral infections for years. But to date it has never really panned out in clinical trials. (If it had, we would all be taking chloroquine every time we caught a serious virus like the flu).
Doesn't mean it can't be beneficial this time for this particular virus; we should always keep trying. I'm just saying it's probably a bit early to be calling miracles based on one small study.
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