This year’s unexpectedly aggressive flu season reminds everyone that although the flu vaccine can reduce the number of people who contract the virus, it is still not 100 percent effective. Researchers report that a tweak to a small-molecule drug shows promise for future production of new antiviral therapies that could help patients, regardless of the strain with which they are infected.
This year’s unexpectedly aggressive flu season reminds everyone that although the flu vaccine can reduce the number of people who contract the virus, it is still not 100 percent effective. Researchers report that a tweak to a small-molecule drug shows promise for future production of new antiviral therapies that could help patients, regardless of the strain with which they are infected.
The researchers present their work today at the 255th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 13,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.
“This has been a bad flu season with a highly infectious, aggressive strain, and the inoculation does not appear to be working well. It makes the population, particularly the young and the elderly, vulnerable to serious illness or even death from the simple flu,” Seth Cohen, Ph.D., says.
Since the start of the 2017-18 flu season in October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported over 65,735 positive tests for the virus in the U.S., resulting in hundreds of deaths. The CDC attributes such an active season to the presence of a particular strain of the virus, influenza A H3N2. Flu vaccines are less effective against H3 type viruses because these pathogens are more likely than other strains to mutate after the vaccine has been produced. Though most years the vaccine is highly effective at keeping people from contracting the flu, this H3 flaw is prompting scientists to seek more reliable treatments.
Read more at American Chemical Society
Image: A new antiviral drug inhibits replication of influenza's genome by binding to manganese ions (purple spheres). (Credit: Christine Morrison)
