US FDA approved tecovirimat, the first anti-viral drug

A drug or a weapon of defense?

The project of SIGA Technologies a private biotech based in New York, started right after the attacks of September 11, 2001 . The aim was to develop a smallpox drug, a virus that was eradicated 40 years ago and, to our knowledge, on our planet, is currently available only in two laboratories in the WHO. [VIDEO]: CDC (Centers for Disease) Control and Prevention) Atlanta in the United States, and the State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology of Koltsovo, in Siberia in Russia.

The drug, a pill to take by mouth, was tested only on animals there are obviously no patients available. In animal tests, infected with variants of the monkey and rabbit virus, tecovirimat was effective in reducing mortality due to the disease and did not have significant side effects. It was also tested on humans, 359 healthy volunteers and was well tolerated.

The Federal Regulatory Agency of the United States, the FDA, in the reasons that led to the approval of the new drug, cites the use as a weapon of defense [VIDEO] against a biological attack by spreading the smallpox virus .

Scientists fear that although the virus is confined to known and highly controlled environments, the diffusion of which is virtually unimaginable, its genome is known and could theoretically be replicated.

For this reason, US authorities have issued the hypothesis of a possible terrorist spread of this virus, which is among the most deadly described up to here. With a mortality of more than 30% infected patients. But also the survivors in a high percentage of cases, must then coexist with some deep lesions all over the body, including the face, up to the blindness

The smallpox, the disease of the past

They seem forgotten, but throughout history, smallpox infections caused catastrophic epidemics . Difficult to place the beginning of its diffusion, but only in the twentieth century is estimated to have caused at least 330 million victims .

The causative agent is a virus called Smallpox. It causes the first symptoms only a few weeks after the infection, with the formation of pustules. It is at this stage that the new medication must be taken to prevent the spread of infection and complications that can go to the point of death.

When debates about the benefits of vaccines not this is a better example than that against smallpox.

In the 1970s, WHO (World Health Organization) decided to take unprecedented action against smallpox in order to achieve its total eradication. Thus began a mbad vaccination campaign and isolation of epidemic outbreaks. The last patient in modern history affected by smallpox was a Somali, in 1977 . Two years later the WHO declared smallpox eradicated from the Earth . A few more years and, in the early 1980s, vaccination campaigns against smallpox ceased definitively

. This means that the vast majority of the planet's citizens are now very vulnerable to a potential attack against smallpox. But, at the same time, it would make no sense to vaccinate all citizens against a virus that does not exist . In this scenario, the FDA approves the first smallpox drug, to be taken only in case of ongoing infection.