3 questions really: How does PrEP work? Is it taken every day? If we can create medications to prevent viruses like HIV, why isn’t there a medication to prevent the common cold?
In: Biology
1. All the current forms of PrEP (and PEP, which are similar drugs taken AFTER potential exposure to HIV) work the same say: the drugs inhibit the virus’s ability to reproduce by interfering with an enzyme called retro transcriptase, which the virus uses to trick the cell into producing new copies of the virus. Without the enzyme, or enough of it, the viruses can’t multiple and infect other cells and therefore can’t establish a permanent infection.
2. It should be taken every day. With daily use, protection rates are higher than 99%. Taken only 6 days a week, the protection rate drops to 96%, and becomes much less effective with each further missed dose.
3. Developing a form of PrEP for the common cold would take a lot of time and money and require patients to take (probably very expensive) drugs on a daily basis. PrEP does have side effects, mostly minor like headaches and nausea, but some people have reported more serious potential side effects. The same would be true of a common cold-PrEP, and the cold is not a dangerous infection worth the effort and risk of either developing a preventive drug or taking that drug.
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