The first compound the team found was niclosamide, an FDA-approved drug typically used to treat worm infections in people for nearly 50 years. She’s a graduate student of molecular biology at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
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Of the 6,000 compounds tested, one already on the market showed the ability to inhibit the infection from spreading and reproducing.
The department said it believes ongoing transmission is only taking place in parts of Miami Beach and the trendy Miami neighborhood of Wynwood, the site of the first local Zika transmission in the United States.
The research team says one of the things keeping the drugs on hold is figuring out how they work in an actual human body. The new recommendations will stay in place until the threat of Zika transmission is reduced, the agency added.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended on Friday that the nation’s entire blood supply be routinely screened for the Zika virus.
Eleven people in the state have been infected with the virus, which is primarily spread through mosquitoes, The Topeka Capital-Journal (http://bit.ly/2bzpcdU ) reports.
Zika has been linked to birth defects in the babies of women infected while traveling abroad.it also can be transmitted sexually, staying in men weeks after exposure to the virus. Zika has achieved epidemic status in the USA territory of Puerto Rico, and is widespread throughout Central and South America.
A collaboration of researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, and Florida State University are working to discover existing drugs that may work against Zika infections.
The team said more studies are needed involving animal and human models in order to find out if the drug compounds are indeed capable of treating Zika infection.
Studies show the Zika virus, borne typically by mosquitoes and occasionally through sexual intercourse, can be very unsafe to pregnant women.
“It takes years if not decades to develop a new drug”. Hearing loss caused by other viruses can be delayed and by the time of their detection, the problem has already worsened.
According to the Oregon Health Authority, neither of the two types of mosquitoes that carry Zika are common to Oregon.
Additionally, there are 74 lab-pending cases awaiting test results to confirm whether they are the virus.
“If people are being used as reservoirs for the virus, we might want to start proactively treating populations where Zika is in circulation, to stop the circulation”, she said.
In the current study, the research team exposed cell cultures to the Zika virus and the drugs one at a time, measuring for indicators of cell death. “Now, it’s gonna be a lot of work because we’re gonna have a lot of rain”, Scott said. “Wait and see what our groups come up with”.
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The study is published in “Nature Medicine”, but Lee says work still needs to be done.
