Antiviral medications are a group of drugs that are commonly used to treat infections caused by viruses. Anti-viral medications are not to be used for bacterial infections are they do not work on bacteria. Antiviral medications cannot kill viruses but they work effectively in preventing them from replicating and infecting more healthy cells.

There are several varieties of medications which are commonly used to treat human infections. Anti virals, antibiotics and anti fungals are specifically designed to work on viruses, bacteria and fungi respectively. The medication is designed to kill or control the infecting organisms while being harmless to the host. That means you can use these medications to control infections with no or little harm to the sick person.

Antivirals have to be distinguished from viricides which kill virus particles when they out side human bodies. There are specific groups of antivirals specifically made for different diseases. For example HIV, hepatitis A, B and C and the Herpes virus groups require different combinations of antiviral to prevent viruses from replicating. Although research is on, scientists have yet to find a single antiviral which will work on all viruses.

It’s not easy to find such an agent simple because viruses use the host’s body cells to create copies of them. They go into hiding inside the host cells and that makes it difficult for the antiviral to find them. And of course, there is a strong chance that the antiviral will also kill infected and healthy host cells all at the same time.

In these modern times, we have access to antiviral drugs, which are effective on two or three groups of viruses. The scientists have mapped the genetic code of several viruses and biomedical research has been able to identify weak points in the structures of several viruses. The main leap of interest in the field came with the HIV virus which created global panic in the form of the AIDS or the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic. The rush to find better and more effective antivirals has trebled since.

The virus is a simple organism, but we haven’t been really able to understand it. As we cannot understand it, we cannot really control it and that’s the rub. Viruses have a genome and enzymes all encapsulated inside a capsid envelope which is tremendously resistant to almost anything. But the catch lies in the fact that they cannot reproduce on their own. They require an ideal human host who can donate their healthy cells for exactly this purpose.

Researchers have tried to find weak points which can be used to defeat this infective property of viruses. They try to formulate antivirals which will work to control nearly every aspect of the virus’s reproductive stages inside the human cells. The common stages in virus reproduction are

1. Sticking to suitable host cells
2. Injecting their own viral genes into host cells
3. Using host contents to build their own baby copies
4. Releasing the babies with complete destruction of the host cell.

Vaccines need the body to cooperate to produce defensive cells. Most of the time a viral vaccine consists of a weakened viral particle which sensitizes the immune system to produce soldier cells to kill the weak viral particles. The vaccine and the defensive immune system work together, which results in the killing of the invading particle. But there is a drawback too; vaccines can cause infections in patients of the same disease they were trying to prevent. A recent innovation is a subunit vaccine that will not cause an infection but it will sensitize the body to the real pathogen. It works faster to sensitize the immune system and that makes this innovation a really valuable discovery.

The main idea for designing modern antiviral medication is to permanently disable viral replications at different stages of its replication process. Either necessary proteins or enzymes are blocked from reaching the mother viral cell and thus the babies which are made are not properly formed. These necessary particles are called as targets and they should be as dissimilar from human cells as possible to prevent damage to human cells.

The target material should also be found in several varieties of viruses so that the same vaccine can be used for several varieties of viruses. Once the targets are identified drugs are then selectively provided which work effectively on that level with that virus. Target proteins are also isolated with computer aided programs and then a gene is injected into the cells or virus to kill the viral cell.