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Migraines also help with hepatitis C
A known migraine medication could also be used in the treatment of hepatitis C virus infections. Scientists at the Twincore Center for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research in Hanover have come to this conclusion. The researchers had already studied approved drugs to find more favorable treatment options for patients with chronic HCV infections.
Chronic liver inflammation often leads to cirrhosis
Hepatitis C is a globally occurring liver inflammation that is caused by an infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and can be acute or chronic. In contrast to viral hepatitis A and B, hepatitis C can not be prevented by vaccination, because so far no effective vaccine against the pathogen is available. For the treatment of various effective drugs are approved, by which the chronic form is mostly curable. But these are expensive, which means that even today about 130 million people worldwide suffer from permanent liver inflammation. The hepatitis can vary depending on the person and life situation, up to every third person affected develops late effects such as cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Migraine remedies with healing properties. Image: Dr_Kateryna - fotolia Researchers are already testing approved drugs
But could not there also be cheaper medicines? This question was also asked by scientists from the Twincore Center for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research in Hanover. They developed the idea of testing already approved active ingredients to save on development costs and thus find new treatment options for hepatitis C patients faster and more cost-effectively. In their search, the researchers made an interesting find, because the migraine drug "flunarizine" used in Canada and Europe also worked against a genotype of HCV. "In the search for new approaches to HCV, we first focused on drugs that block ion channels," said Paula Perin of the Institute for Experimental Virology, according to a recent statement from the institute.
Seven different genotypes known
The so-called "ion channels" are tubular protein complexes found in the cell membrane. They play a central role in the infection of liver cells with the different hepatitis C virus strains, because heptitis C viruses are very versatile and adaptable. Experts currently differentiate between seven different genotypes and almost 70 subtypes, each of which has different effects on its host - the human being. For example, in one patient, it develops. after only a few years, a liver cell carcinoma, another person affected gets a fatty liver.
As the Twincore Center reports, Paula Perin and her colleagues tested 23 approved and proven drugs for various diseases, and recognized that the migraine drug flunarizine was effective against a genotype of HCV. "Flunarizine slows down genotype II HC viruses during viral entry," explains the scientist. "When the membrane of the virus and the host cell merge together, the migraine drug interferes with this fusion, preventing the virus from getting into the liver cell."
16 million patients are infected with the virus genotype II
Even if the active ingredient is only effective in one of the seven genotypes, this would nevertheless be a success, because it is said that at least 16 million patients are infected with it. Above all, cooperation partners can now try to "slightly change the active ingredient so that it can also be used against other genotypes," adds the director of the institute, Thomas Pietschmann. "It certainly holds the potential for a cost-effective strategy against HCV - and incidentally, our team could still answer basic questions about the virus entering the cell," Pietschmann continues. (No)