Antibiotic drugs treat a large degree of bacterial infections, but viral infections seem to be trickier to develop medicinal treatment for. Why?
In: Biology
Many drugs that treat viral infections like immunoglobulin don’t actually act on the virus itself; they supercharge the body’s immune system so that it can deal with the virus (and the damaged cells). Some anti-virals are indeed broad, like pleconaril, they work on a number of common-cold viruses because the infection pathways are similar so the drug can act on it. Some, while they do act on the same process that many viruses employ to infect cells, simply work better on some than another; one of the anti-HIV drugs, that prevents RNA transcription also works on Hep-B; it’s just that there are other treatments for Hep-B that might be more effective.
Viruses are generally more tricky to develop treatments for for a variety of reasons – unlike bacteria; you have to test on living cells that are infected by the virus; unlike in bacteria where you can grow a culture and test on the bacteria first. Viruses when they’re not infecting a living cells don’t have metabolism; they don’t breathe, process nutrients, etc etc etc, so unlike bacteria, you can’t poison them before they attack. Etc etc….
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