Why are these substances used? Because these drugs are often the only ones capable of treating severe primary cancers, offering sufferers the chance to survive for several years. With respect to this priority, the risk of developing a second tumor, as well as being low, is considered a secondary problem.
In conclusion Chemotherapy can cause side effects, which vary from patient to patient and depending on the type of treatment chosen. The good news is that most of these side effects go away with the end of therapy.
Furthermore, today it is possible to reduce them to a minimum or even prevent them through close medical monitoring, the adoption of appropriate behaviors and the use of therapeutic combinations that are increasingly attentive to the needs of the patient.
The communication of any discomfort or dysfunction by the patient is essential to intervene promptly, stemming the most serious or permanent damage.
The ability to block the tumor is an absolute advantage over the side effects that therapy can cause. The experimentation of antitumor agents increasingly specific and selective for cancer cells will reduce the negative action on healthy cells, tipping the balance of costs and benefits increasingly on the part of the latter.
Coronavirus: Antiviral drugs could change the course of the pandemicWhile not easy to manufacture, new pills to treat COVID-19 are showing promise in containing the disease and saving lives. By Priyanka RunwalPublished 23 Nov 2021, 09:47 CETAntiviral Drugs
Antiviral pills run down the rails of a packaging plant in Khimki, Russia on May 18, 2020.
Photograph by Andrey Rudakov, Bloomberg via Getty ImagesYears before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, virologists had begun to study drugs called antivirals to protect us from new forms of coronavirus.
The search was slow and there were some failures. But thanks to the UK’s approval of the new drug molnupiravir from the pharmaceutical company Merck, and an injection of funds for research and development for antivirals, the prospects for these treatments are becoming much brighter.
Unlike vaccines, whose purpose is to prevent infection, antivirals act as a second line of defense, slowing and finally stopping the evolution of a disease when the infection is already present. Furthermore, they are important when effective vaccines against viral diseases are not available, such as in the case of HIV, hepatitis C and herpes.
But the development of antivirals is expensive and difficult, especially when it comes to acute respiratory syndromes, for which the treatment window is short. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that triggered the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have decided to retrofit old drugs or compounds already being tested for other diseases.
“It’s a typical situation,” says Katherine Seley-Radtke, a pharmaceutical chemistry specialist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. “Every time a new virus emerges, or an old one recurs, we try to take the drugs already available out of the drawer to see if they work”.
Remdesivir, originally developed by biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences to treat infections such as hepatitis C and Ebola, is the only antiviral drug approved so far by the US FDA to treat COVID-19. It must be given by injection while the patient is hospitalized, although not everyone agrees on its ability to treat COVID-19.