Relief may be in sight for tropical hospitals that are increasingly overwhelmed during outbreaks of dengue, a viral disease that can cause excruciating pain and even death. A new study has identified a compound that blocks dengue virus replication in test tube experiments and in mice, and it might one day be available as an easy-to-take pill.

If it works in clinical trials in humans, the drug could be given at primary care clinics, “which would be very important for the developing world where dengue is hyperendemic,” says Jenny Low, an infectious disease physician at Singapore General Hospital who was not involved in the work….

Starting in 2009, Neyts’s team screened tens of thousands of small molecules for antidengue activity using an automated high-throughput testing process. Chemists tweaked several molecules they found, producing more than 2000 compounds for further testing. One of those, named JNJ-A07, eventually proved equally potent against all four serotypes in test tube experiments. Next, the researchers administered the compound to mice, both before and after a dengue infection, to see whether the drug might be useful as a treatment, but also as a prophylactic. In both cases, the drug was “highly effective” in reducing viral loads and virus-induced disease, the team reports today in Nature.

Read more about that at: https://www.science.org/content/article/first-drug-dengue-excruciating-disease-may-be-horizon?utm_campaign=news_daily_2021-10-06&et_rid=378170285&et_cid=3948221