Drug Against Virus?

Antibiotics effectively attack most bacteria, but in fighting disease-causing pests that are smaller than bacteria--chiefly the viruses--the wonder drugs have chalked up a record of failure. Last week, concluding a series of three articles in the A.M.A. Journal, a group of Navy doctors reported on an antibiotic that works well against what seems to be a form of virus disease. The antibiotic is Declomycin, a close relative to aureomycin. The disease is viral pneumonia.

Bacterial pneumonia, once a major killer, is now largely controlled by sulfa drugs and antibiotics. Viral pneumonia is another matter. Believed to be caused by many kinds of viruses, and called primary atypical pneumonia (PAP) by doctors, the disease presents an uncomfortable array of symptoms. The patient usually does not get suddenly ill; he gradually gets coldlike symptoms, distressing headaches, rising temperature, chills, and a severe cough. The sickness may last weeks, though it rarely kills.

Chasing a Bug. For years, researchers have been trying to isolate and assess the role of PAP viruses. In 1944, Harvard Virologist Monroe Eaton found in the sputum of some pneumonia patients an agent that caused PAP. So far, researchers have not been able to prove for sure that "Eaton Agent" is a virus. It goes through fine filters and thus seems to fall in the sub-bacterial size-range of the viruses. Like some other viruses, it can be grown in chick embryos and hamsters. Using new fluorescent techniques, researchers have traced the antibodies that are formed to fight the Eaton Agent. But they have never been able positively to single out the presumed virus and photograph it with an electron microscope.

Finding a Drug. The first good chance to determine how widespread Eaton Agent pneumonia is came two years ago, when Marine recruits at Parris Island. S.C., flooded into the local Navy dispensary displaying pneumonia symptoms. Since the recruits represented an easily controllable population for the purposes of study, Navy doctors, headed by Captain James R. Kingston and assisted by the National Institutes of Health, went to work. They separated PAP patients from recruits suffering from other respiratory diseases, took sputum for culturing and blood samples for testing. They found that 68% of the recruits displaying PAP symptoms were infected with Eaton Agent. And they found that Declomycin "significantly reduced the duration of fever, rales, cough, malaise and fatigue."

The discovery does not help much in treating individual cases. The disease is hard to diagnose. The symptoms closely resemble those of other infections, including parrot fever and flu. Laboratory tests to establish that Eaton Agent is involved may take three weeks. By that time, a patient is well over the hump. Conceding that antibiotics should not be used indiscriminately, an A.M.A. editorial nonetheless suggests that Declomycin be given in epidemic situations where Eaton Agent is strongly suspected to be the villain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.