Health Touches

The virus is a slippery little critter. It’s smaller than bacteria; you have to have an electron microscope just to see it. Not only is it extremely tiny, it is not the least bit susceptible to antibiotics that kill bacteria. It is for this reason that doctors don’t want to use antibiotics when you have a cold; colds are caused by the rhinovirus.

Besides being immune to antibiotics, the virus is sneaky. It can’t reproduce on its own. It steals DNA or RNA from your cells and then kills the cell after it has stolen everything it needs to make new viruses. To top it off, not only do viruses steal genetic building blocks from its hosts, but viruses are also terrific shape-shifters. They mutate rather quickly. Scientists attempting to make a drug to kill a particular type of virus are essentially shooting at a moving target.

So far, we know a number of diseases and conditions caused by viruses, from the scourge of children everywhere, chicken pox, to mad cow disease, from warts to Ebola hemorrhagic fever, from flu to AIDS. Because they are very difficult to detect, we do not know the entire range of diseases that viruses cause.

One of the challenges of living in the global community where so many travel back and forth across the world is the ease with which viruses can be spread along with the ease with which they can mutate. The 1918 flu outbreak was helped along by a world war which brought soldiers from many communities and countries together the same way airports and other modes of travel bring disparate people into contact with one another.

What to do? Vaccines have been developed for some types of viruses and scientists have also developed some anti-viral drugs to treat viral diseases. The spread of some viruses such as HIV can be prevented through avoiding certain high-risk behaviors while the spread of flu viruses can be reduced through developing new behaviors such as frequent hand cleaning and periodic cleaning of areas where people gather.