Full article on SARS
By DANIEL Q. HANEY
Wed, April 23, 2003
(AP) - Scientists in search of a SARS cure have narrowed their focus to several dozen drugs that appear to have the best chance of stopping the deadly respiratory virus, but they have abandoned plans to test one of them in people.
The urgent hunt for something that works - preferably a medicine already on the market or close to it - was helped by the breakthrough a week ago in decoding the virus's genetic makeup, which gives scientists some logical targets.
While they cannot predict when they will find a treatment, they should know soon if an effective medicine is likely to be in hospitals quickly. If none in testing shows promise in the next few weeks, a treatment may have to be created from scratch, a process that could take at least five years.
For now, SARS treatment amounts to keeping patients isolated and dealing with their symptoms while the infection runs its course.
The drug ribavirin is being used by doctors in Hong Kong and Toronto who are convinced it helps many SARS patients. But U.S. researchers, who have been skeptical all along, shelved a plan to formally test the drug with a careful experiment in people.
The decision was made this week after testing at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., found no evidence that the drug has any effect against SARS virus growing in tissue cultures.
Dr. Catherine Laughlin, virology chief at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there was simply no evidence it worked. "It has significant toxicity, and there was a real chance you could do more harm than good."
Viruses are much harder to kill than bacteria, and only three dozen antiviral medicines are on the market. None is specifically aimed at the coronaviruses, the family that includes the SARS virus as well as some that cause common colds.
Laughlin said ribavirin is the only drug conclusively shown ineffective in the army experiments so far, and lab testing is underway or will begin this week on all the other antiviral drugs on the market. These are 16 AIDS drugs, 13 herpes drugs and seven aimed at flu and other viruses. Also to be tested are seven forms of interferon, which are the body's natural microbe killers.
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