Topical treatment wipes out herpes with RNAi

http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/topical-treatment-wipes-out-herpes-with-rnai

by rms • 17 years ago

34 28 17 years ago

harvardscience.harvard.edu

TooMuchNick3• 17 years ago

And so began the thread that everyone was a little afraid to post "hooray!" in.

aston• 17 years ago

Boffery needs to check in with these folks for possible cross-promotion opportunities...

TooMuchNick3• 17 years ago

(Context: I'm the cofounder of a pre-launch site called Boffery, a visual private diary of a user's sex life.)

Everyone tells me that, and everyone is right. There's one service I'd love to partner with if I ever got the chance. Hopefully you'll never need to use this, but inSPOT is getting popular in the Bay Area as a way to discreetly tell people you may have given them an STD: http://www.inspot.org/gateway.aspx

lunchbox• 17 years ago

The most significant line from the article for me: "The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 536 million people worldwide are infected with herpes..."

That's really an astonishing number. From a utilitarian standpoint this finding must be incredibly important.

gojomo2• 17 years ago

That number was a surprise on the low side for me, because I've often heard estimates that 25%-30% of adults in the US have HSV-2. Naively scaling that up to worldwide would have suggested up to 2 billion infections.

froo• 17 years ago

Except that that figure is quite high when you consider other nation's rates of infection

For example, Australia's rate of HSV-2 is around 12% while the UK is around 10% even though we have fairly similar cultural backgrounds when it comes to sexual activity.

I would expect that rate to be much lower in some middle eastern and asian cultures due to differences in culture regarding sexual activity.

536 million might be on the conservative side, but I would suggest it's nowhere near 2 billion.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

Since many infected people never display any symptoms, I was too expecting a much larger number of carriers.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

I regard eliminating STD's and developing 100% idiot proof contraceptives as quite important. Ideally this would lead to humanity getting over the whole sex thing once and for all and it can be relegated to stuff no one cares about like whether you like mustard or ketchup.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

I think developing idiot-only contraceptives would be a major step in the right direction.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

you assume evolution = getting better when in fact high intelligence is linked with a lower incidence of childbirth making intelligence a dead end.

amix• 17 years ago

Hooray for genetic hacking. I really hope they can use similar methods to wipe out cancer cells as well - thought, cancer isn't a virus and there are lots of different cancer cells.

mhb• 17 years ago

Experimental and epidemiological data imply a causative role for viruses and they appear to be the second most important risk factor for cancer development in humans,...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus

redrobot50505• 17 years ago

HPV is a cancer caused by the presence of a virus.

Diabetes Type I tends to occur in people that contain a certain blood virus (often they're born with it.) The next time you donate blood, look at your donor card. It'll relate your viral status just like it does your blood type. Apparently, they've discovered that children tend to develop diabetes if they're transfused with blood that contains the virus. (Sorry I can't remember its name. I just know because I asked about my status last time I donated and what it meant, and they explained "Basically, we can use your blood safely with children.")

Keep in mind its not a direct correlation: You might have the virus, but not diabetes. Or vice versa.

And outside of humans, Feline Leukemia is transmitted from close contact (such as fighting or sexual activity).

Hopefully this research, and research like it, will lead to breakthrough that allow us to better target virii and protect ourselves from them. The goal here, aside from eliminating life-impacting diseases such as HIV, HPV, and Herpes, but also eliminating the "common cold".

Finally people will no longer be able to say, "They can put a man on the moon, but they can't cure the common cold...".

likpok2• 17 years ago

Strictly speaking, HPV is a virus which causes cervical cancer (in almost every case), and to a lesser extent other cancers like mouth, anus and penis.

I believe (found a nature paper about) that a virus closely linked with diabetes is Coxsackie.

One of the issues with the common cold is that it mutates fairly quickly, IIRC and there are a lot of them. HPV does not (there is a vaccine for some strains).

jcs• 17 years ago

HPV is a cancer caused by the presence of a virus.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is a virus, not a cancer. Most people carry the virus but are asymptomatic. Of the approx 130 types of HPV, some can lead to cancer, most commonly of the cervix.

jimgo• 17 years ago

Interesting article. Does anyone know if this insight can then lead to curing already infected patients? My understanding is this treatment is a condom, not a cure.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

It seems the technique could be used to stop the virus from spreading from cell to cell inside the patient, so, pretty much, it appears very close to a cure.

speek• 17 years ago

This is brilliant. Things like these are why I love science.

Topical treatment wipes out herpes with RNAi

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