Ans. The treatment of viral infections is more
challenging when compared to bacterial diseases and this is
primarily because viruses are relatively very small in size and
reproduce inside the cell for its survival.When a cell is infected
by a virus, it destroys the cell and simultaneously releases new
virus and this continues very rapidly,making it tough to be treated
with usual medicines which are otherwise effective for bacterial
diseases.Apart from this,there are various other reasons like:
- Virus survive and reproduce only inside the cells which makes
it difficult for the antibodies to reach them and attack them.
- In case of viral infections, treatment with antibiotics is
useless and won't help because viruses use their host cells itself
to peform their activities.In order to overcome this antiviral
drugs are being discovered which works by interfering with viral
enzymes.But these drugs are effective only against a few types of
viral diseases and still research is going on for producing more
such drugs.Moreover,when compared to antibiotics, antiviral drugs
have severe side effects too.
- Viruses being obligatory parasites,uses the host cells itself
to reproduce.Thus,a chemical or durg that kills them will
eventually kill the host cells too.Thus it is very challenging to
discover drugs that inhibits the growth of virus and at the same
time do not affect the host cells.
- Carrying out experiments on viruses in the lab is also
challenging because they survive and reproduce inside the host
cells.This makes the research process slow and thus very few drugs
are found and tested for its effectiveness when compared to
anitbiotics which effectively treats bacterial infections,because
bacteria reproduce outside the host cells and thus it is easier to
target them.Unlike antiviral drugs that targets only a few viruses,
a single antibiotic can target many bacteria.