Cold medicine and tissue paper manufacturers beware!

What about mutations?

And isnt the same thing with anti-biotics? the strongest will survive and breed a new elite of virus.

 

That's awesome. Hm.

Cure cancer we get super cancer?

 

I think not, from what I remember, Cancer is just caused by a dumbass cell who loses function and wants to reproduce without any limits.

 

My comparison was about the negative effects, not terapeuthics (how it works and against what)

Plus anti-biotics should only be used in dire cases because their abuse generated a new kind of infections much more dire. :/

http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/antibiotics.htm

 

Actually it's a protein and it just gets other proteins to fold in the bad way it has, but what you said is more or less right.

 

its a mutation in the cell that make it go berserk, only looking after its belly-button, refusing to die, and never ceasing reproducing (with correpted DNA which makes the new cells to have same problems), plus in case of malign cancer spreading its seed in the body.

 

That's prion proteins you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
A cancer is a cell line, like others have stated, that lose the function to control their proliferation (or growth for the biologically illiterate).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer

Wikipedia, it's just a click away.

The problem with antibiotics is that if you don't manage to kill them all, one might evolve a protein that breaks down the penicillin molecules, for example, and thus become resistant. Your body doesn't become dependant on antibiotics at all. The only thing more dire about infections by resistant strains is that you can't treat them :p
I think the main concern with resistance is with pathogens that most people can fight off themselves, but old people for example can actually die from. If you treat everyone who gets it with antibiotics, resistant strains may develop and then you can't treat the old or immunecompromised who are infected with that strain.

The common cold wouldn't be very nasty if it developed resistance to drugs, it would most likely just go back to how it is now. I think the pathogenicity is rarely changed... could be wrong.

 

Viruses can trigger cancer, so yeah, if a cancer-triggering virus mutates, you have to find a new cure for that strain.

However you won't suddenly end up with "super-cancer" or even a "super-virus". That's not how selection works. The only thing "super" about the new strain is that it's resistant to the particular cure.

Also, if viruses and infections work anything like organisms, they don't suddenly adapt to the treatment, it's just that the ones that aren't resistant to it get wiped out and the ones that are consequently have less competition when it comes to being spread. So the super-resistant minority that could have easily be defeated by the autoimmune system grows and spreads on its own.

 

I'm still waiting for nano-therapy. Antibiotics are pretty useless against virii because as virii are not alive until they enter a human cell, it's very hard to get them to bind to pathogens. Imagine that you make an antibiotic that can attack virii...since virii turn your cells into the pathogens, how would you keep it from killing your own cells.

To fight virii is better to empower the body's immune system. IIRC thats how the Interferon and Interleukin drugs work.

 

Interestingly enough with the HIV medicines prescribed they have found cases similar to that of anti-biotics. Someone starts taking the drugs and after a period of good health they start getting AIDS symptoms again. What has happened is most of the HIV viruses in their bodies that are killed off and only the viruses that are resistant to the drugs remain. The funny thing though is that the viruses that aren't resistant actually outcompete the resistant ones in a body that isn't taking the medicine. So some doctors are doing trials for HIV infected patients in whom the medicine isn't helping anymore, where they will take the patient of the drugs for a few months and then put them on again.

 

Well, it's not that surprising actually. Wildtype (that means "regular") HIV has probably evolved a very efficient way to infect human T-cells. If a drug targets the proteins that bind to our cells surfaces to block the required interaction, then the virii that survive because they have a different docking mechanism so to speak, probably have a less efficient binding to our cells, and thus infect cells at a lower rate than the wildtype. But that's just speculation on my part...

Interferons and Interleukins are normal signalling and effetor molecules in the immune system, so that's probably how they work. Gamma Interferon has antiviral activity for example.

 

Slightly off topic...the interesting question would be....would Super Mutants be immune to HIV?

 

Their T-limfocits would devour the HIV virus. THey are ways more resistant to diseases, so HIV would have to mutate heavily to even affect them.

 

im not sure about that, the HIV has a very particular way of acting.

Plus they are more resistent in general, a virus with a specified configuration could inflict damage.

 

The really interesting question would be. Considering the alternate timeline would HIV/AIDS exist?

Sorry for the off topic post but the thought intrigued me.

 

Although the whole thing is, of course, nothing more than a hypothetical, the obvious answer is: of course Super Mutants would be immune to HIV.

The way FEV works, if I'm not mistaken, is by essentially correcting or destroying anything that doesn't conform exactly to the infected organism's natural DNA sequence (including sperm/eggs, hence the sterility issue). So it doesn't matter what way HIV goes about it... if it infects a cell, the DNA is altered, and so FEV would destroy or correct the abnormality. I don't recall how the "side-effects" that make a Super Mutant a Super Mutant are supposed to result from it... I'll have to refresh my knowledge on that.

As for the topic... while it is, of course, a great leap forward having a map of the cold virus's bits, it'll probably be a quite a while before anything comes of it. First they have to actually find these similarities between all the different strains, then they have to find a drug that affects that specific thing, then they have to do endless trials to make sure that drug isn't doing more harm than the virus itself (and considering it is only a cold virus, I don't think most people would be willing to trade, for example, impotence and a runny bowel for a sore throat and a runny nose), etc. and so on.

 

Considering FEV was designed to protect against bio weapons, there's a good chance that muties won't be inconvenienced too much by it. Not only does FEV repair genetic abnormalities at an incredible rate, the FEV DNA structure is a quadruple helix. I doubt normal human virii can affect them as easily.

Back on topic, I think they'll have to figure a way to infuse the immune system with a heuristics protein check wherein the immune system checks a virus' proteic sheath and learns to recognize the different iterations of the virus.

 

But HIV directly attacks leucocytes which are the ones that protect against virii. The quadruple helix sure is a bonus, but that can also mean it will just take longer to infect.

But yeah, probably they would be resistant.