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One universal antiviral to rule them all?

(www.cuimc.columbia.edu)
331 points breve | 3 comments | 26 Aug 25 14:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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abeppu ◴[26 Aug 25 15:19 UTC] No.45027823[source]▶
> When he and his colleagues looked at the individuals’ immune cells, they could see encounters with all sorts of viruses—flu, measles, mumps, chickenpox. But the patients had never reported any overt signs of infection or illness.

Given that the article goes on to talk about mild persistent inflammation, is it possible that these individuals are sometimes asymptomatic but still capable of carrying/transmitting viruses at least temporarily? The article talks about potentially immunizing healthcare workers during a future pandemic, but if this was just allowing people to never develop symptoms (and not have to leave work) while having low-grade infections, would we accidentally create a work-force of Typhoid Marys?

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1. neltnerb ◴[27 Aug 25 05:03 UTC] No.45035648[source]▶
I wonder if enough of them exist to even do a study like that.

I have encountered side effects that probably no one has seen before, simply because of rarity and peculiarity of behavior. You don't run into a ton of people using both interferon and doing karate, so if bruising more easily happens 10% of the time... would anyone notice?

Personally I would be more worried about persistent inflammation causing inflammatory disorders, of which there are many. If there are like 10,000 individuals with this trait then there just aren't enough to detect. But that seems direct... wouldn't you expect something like this to potentially even destroy viral reservoirs over time?

The fact that this is short term in the treatment made me 1000x more comfortable with the idea in any case.

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2. anjel ◴[27 Aug 25 05:49 UTC] No.45035855[source]▶
I wonder if large numbers of humans acquire this mutation, how viruses would adapt to this evolutionary pressure?
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3. nine_k ◴[27 Aug 25 07:22 UTC] No.45036463[source]▶
They would still have too many other possible hosts.Or maybe they'd find a way to attack that very system, similarly how HIV attacks the immune system.