{"id":843,"date":"2004-03-02T18:45:26","date_gmt":"2004-03-02T18:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=843"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:33:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:33:13","slug":"hepatitis-drug-may-help-treat-sars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=843","title":{"rendered":"hepatitis drug may help treat SARS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A commercially available drug may help treat  severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which currently has no  effective therapies or vaccines. An international team of researchers  report in the March <em>Nature Medicine<\/em> that pegylated interferon-alpha, an  antiviral drug commonly used to treat hepatitis C, eases the disease&#8217;s  symptoms and may even help reduce its spread &#8212; in monkeys, anyway.  Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the  Netherlands, and his colleagues treated macaques with interferon before  infecting them with the SARS virus. Interferon reduced the damaging  effect of the virus on the lungs, helping the animals breathe easier,  and significantly reduced the amount of virus in the body. The treated  monkeys&#8217; throats exhaled fewer infectious particles, which, if the drug  has the same effect in humans, might curb its transmission. Using  interferon on animals already infected with SARS produced similar  effects on a smaller scale. The authors write that the drug &#8220;should be  considered a candidate drug for SARS therapy&#8221; and advise clinical  trials. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 3\/02\/2004.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A commercially available drug may help treat severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which currently has no effective therapies or vaccines. An international team of researchers report in the March Nature Medicine that pegylated interferon-alpha, an antiviral drug commonly used &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=843\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}