BRAINCAKETreating Viral Diseases
Viral diseases are much harder to treat than bacterial ones. Antibiotics do not work against viruses, because viruses have no peptidoglycan cell wall, no 70S ribosomes and no metabolism of their own for antibiotics to target. Giving antibiotics for a viral infection only increases the risk of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
The main difficulty is that viruses replicate inside host cells using the host's own machinery. A drug that stops viral replication may also damage the host cell. Useful antiviral drugs therefore target molecules or stages that are unique to the virus:
• Blocking entry: entry inhibitors stop the virus binding to or fusing with the host cell.
• Blocking genome copying: reverse transcriptase inhibitors such as zidovudine (AZT) stop HIV making DNA. Aciclovir is a nucleoside analogue that is activated by a herpes virus enzyme and then stops viral DNA synthesis, so it acts mainly in infected cells.
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Key terms in this lesson
- reverse transcriptase
- A viral enzyme that synthesises DNA from an RNA template, used by retroviruses such as HIV.
More in Prokaryotic Cells
- Negative ssRNA Viruses
- Retrovirus Replication
- Viruses and Disease
- The Spread of Viral Diseases
- Preventing Viral Diseases
- Vaccination
- Disease Control
- Drug Development
All 31 lessons in Prokaryotic Cells · All Edexcel AS-level Biology topics