Potential drug to fight Zika virus dicovered by Spanish scientists!

New Delhi: The Zika flavivirus that broke out as an epidemic in Brazil in 2015 and spread to 70 countries in the world, also made an appearance in India in late May this year.

With no treatment and/or vaccine available for the mosquito-borne disease, Zika is as strong as ever and the people just as vulnerable to its attack.

However, scientists just might be getting closer to developing something that could help combat the Zika virus.

As per a report, researchers from a southeastern Spanish University announced the discovery of a molecule that could be used as a potential drug to fight the effects of a Zika virus infection.

In a statement on Saturday, the San Antonio Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM) said that scientists belonging to its prestigious Bio-informatics and High-Performance Computing research group had found that a compound previously used as an antibiotic countered the symptoms of the mosquito-borne disease, Efe news reported.

"It's a drug that had been withdrawn from the market because it had lost its potency as an antibiotic, but we know it can be administered to humans," said a member of the research team.

The molecular structure of the proteins involved in the Zika virus' replication process was first described only a year ago.

Researchers focused on an antibiotic that had been previously prescribed to fend off "nosocomial" infections (those acquired inside a hospital).

The teams of both universities have now patented the molecule as an anti-Zika treatment.

When given to mice as an experiment, the compound known as "novobiocin," showed phenomenal results – a 100% cure rate.

The only pending task is to figure out the exact dose needed for humans to achieve the same successful outcome.

The Zika virus – named after a forest in Uganda where it was first isolated in 1947 – saw a swift expansion between early 2015 and January 2016 throughout South America and the Caribbean, when factors such as tropical climates and insufficient mosquito-population control led the World Health Organization to term it an epidemic and global emergency.

(With IANS inputs)