New Drug Relieves Viral Cold Symptoms
An experimental
medication stops sniffles and the other burdensome symptoms of the common
cold one day faster than usual.
Treatment with
the antiviral medication pleconaril -- which is awaiting approval from
the Food and Drug Administration -- reduced the time from first symptoms
to complete recovery from 7.3 days for people receiving a placebo pill
to 6.3 days for people getting the active compound.
"Pleconaril
is the first effective antiviral therapy for the treatment of the common
cold," said Dr. Frederick Hayden, professor of internal medicine and pathology,
at the University of Virginia Medical School, Charlottesville.
Hayden said,
however, while pleconaril would help relieve symptoms, it fell far short
of being the long-sought "cure for the common cold."
In the United
States more than 1 billion common colds occur each year.
"Picornaviruses
-- the virus attacked by pleconaril -- account for approximately one-half
of all colds and many other serious respiratory illnesses," Hayden said
at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy,
sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology.
The meeting
is normally conducted in September but was postponed due to travel disruptions
caused by the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11.
"A one day
reduction in symptoms can be significant for patients," said Dr. Octavio
Ramilo, a pediatrician at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
School, Dallas. "However, the real key to whether this drug is useful will
be its cost. It may be difficult to translate these findings into clinical
benefit."
"Deciding whether
to use this drug will be a very individual decision," suggested Dr. Susan
Coffin, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. She
said that if pleconaril does not cost a lot more than an over-the-counter
medication, it may have a great deal more usefulness than if the drug is
priced three or four times more than the nonprescription medications.
Hayden and
spokespersons for the drug maker, ViroPharma Inc., of Exton, Pa., said
pricing has not yet been determined.
"There is also
the problem of deciding if a patient is suitable for pleconaril," she said.
In the study about one-third of the patients treated with the drug did
not suffer from picornaviruses, and were not helped by the drug.
Overall, Hayden
said in all the people treated with the drug there was a marginal improvement
in outcomes -- reduced time until runny nose symptoms were alleviated.
When scientists performed laboratory studies to determine exactly who had
picornaviruses, then it showed that patients with the virus who were treated
with pleconaril felt better faster than those on the placebo pills.
Hayden said
there was a statistically significant difference among patients who felt
better after 24 hours and after 48 hours as well as time to complete alleviation
of symptoms. He said patients getting pleconaril also slept better and
used about 25 percent fewer facial tissues during the course of the cold.
In his presentation,
Hayden reported on two studies, each of which included more than 1,000
adult patients who self-reported they were suffering from a common cold.
Patients who had allergies or fever were excluded from the study because
those conditions would indicate the discomfort is not due to a picornavirus,
he said.
Hayden said
picornaviruses are present more frequently in autumn months so patients
who show up at the doctor's office in October with a runny nose, but don't
have a high fever would be likely candidates for pleconaril.
Because the
drug is a prescription medication, Hayden suggested there might be a need
to prescribe the drug before the cold season so that a patient could have
it in the medicine cabinet for use at the earliest sign of the sniffles.
He said further
studies are being performed in children -- the group most affected by the
common cold -- and to see if giving the drug before symptoms can protect
against suffering a cold at all.
--
Copyright 2001 by United
Press International.
All rights reserved.
--
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