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Scientists Find New Way To Destroy Anthrax
t0rnt0pieces writes "Yahoo news is reporting a story about how scientists have discovered a new way to combat the anthrax bacteria, even if the strain is drug resistant. The method uses an enzyme from bacteriophages, virii which attack bacteria. The scientists say that this method could even be adapted to combat other virii. This truly looks to be a fantastic breakthrough in the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections."
... Look into Amantadine or its ilk, which are effective drugs for the treatment of influenza.
There aren't many antiviral drugs, and the ones we have are not especially effective, but it's incorrect to say antivirals don't exist.
If you have a subscription to Nature, you can get a rather more accurate summary in this News and Views piece.
The research article itself is here.
See the "the only thing I'd worry about.." thread for more on this... Basically the way this phage enzyme binds to its target bacterium surface molecule is the same sort of very very specific "3D lock and key" fit that an antibody has for its target molecule. The original Nature article is not very well explained by Yahoonews, but the scientists did testing, and the PlyG did not bind at all to several closely-related (Bacillus) bacteria, though it did bind to one that is almost identical to anthrax. Humans aren't the normal place these bacteria are found, so it's extremely unlikely that any "normal" bacteria could be targetted by this.
I'm trying to think of a non-biology comparison here... uh, how about thinking of the recognition of a bacterium by the phage enzyme in terms of cryptography -- the phage has a key to get into this particular bacterial species, but it's really unlikely that the same key would work on any other type of bacteria.
Oh, and viruses leave the body all the time, eg folks pick up cold viruses from other people's sneezes.
It also occurs to me that if one was drowning, yelling "Help! I'm drowning and I lost my bikini top" would probably be m