Wednesday - June 10, 2020

This slightly makes sense

If this virus came from animals to begin with, then maybe animal medicine can cure it. Or maybe not.

A drug used to treat an infectious disease in cats effectively stopped the replication of the pandemic coronavirus in laboratory tests, according to Chinese researchers.

The findings come just weeks after the American developer of the feline medicine announced that it had applied to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency approval to start clinical trials of the drug on humans.

In a non-peer-review paper posted on the preprint server bioRxiv on Sunday, researchers led by Professor Zhang Shuyang at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said that computer modelling and laboratory experiments suggested that the medication called GC376 was “a relatively effective and safe drug candidate”.

The drug binds to an important enzyme of Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease Covid-19, according to the study.

The enzyme, called Mpro, breaks down big proteins into amino acids and the virus uses these amino acids as building blocks. Without Mpro, the virus cannot make copies of itself.

The Chinese scientists found that the drug could easily enter cells infected by the novel coronavirus and inhibit viral production.

It required only a dose of very low concentration to achieve maximum effect, “showing an excellent safety profile”, the researchers said.

GC376 was developed by Anivive Lifesciences, a biotech company based in Long Beach, California, and has been used to treat kittens suffering the feline infectious peritonitis, a fetal disease that is caused by a coronavirus that does not infect humans.

We did hear that the tigers in the zoo caught COVID from their people. And have heard that house cats can catch it too. Apparently so can ferrets, and now mink. But it’s only in the Netherlands that humans have caught it from animals. Other than the Wuhan wet market, naturally.

Dutch mink cull starts as coronavirus spreads to 10th farm

Dutch mink farms have begun a government-ordered cull amid concern that animals infected with coronavirus could transmit the illness to humans.

Infected mink have been found on 10 Dutch farms where the ferret-like animals are bred for their fur, according to the country’s Food & Wares Authority.

“All mink breeding farms where there is an infection will be cleared, and farms where there are no infections won’t be,” said spokeswoman Frederique Hermie.

The government ordered the cull of 10,000 mink on Wednesday after determining that affected farms could act as a long-term reservoir of disease.

Dutch mink were first infected with coronavirus by their handlers in April. In May, the government identified two cases in which humans had been infected by sick animals — the only animal-to-human transmissions known since the global outbreak began in China.

The Dutch mink farms were set to be shut down in a couple of years anyway. Because PETA.

Too bad that kitty meds don’t work on minks. Or do they? Has anyone tried?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/10/2020 at 03:23 PM   
Filed Under: • pandemic and epidemic diseases •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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