Why the FDA Just Approved a Drug for Smallpox, Nearly 40 Years After the Disease Was EradicatedThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just approved a drug for a disease that no longer exists...well, sort of.
Today (July 13), the agency announced it has approved TPOXX (generic
name: tecovirimat), the first drug that specifically treats smallpox.
Yes, https://www.livescience.com/46735-could-smallpox-come-back.html" rel="nofollow - smallpox ,
the disease that was eradicated from the world in 1980, thanks to a
global vaccination campaign. (Eradication means that cases of the
disease no longer occur naturally.)
However, despite global eradication, there remains a concern that the smallpox virus could be used as a https://www.livescience.com/50037-biological-weapons-diagnosis-treatment.html" rel="nofollow - bioweapon , the agency said.
"To address the risk of bioterrorism, Congress has taken steps to
enable the development and approval of countermeasures to thwart
pathogens that could be employed as weapons," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the
FDA commissioner, https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm613496.htm" rel="nofollow - said in a statement .
"Today's approval provides an important milestone in these efforts.
This new treatment affords us an additional option should smallpox ever
be used as a bioweapon."
Technically, smallpox has not been completely wiped off the planet —
some stocks of the virus still exist in labs in the United States and
Russia. There is concern that, in the past, some countries made the
smallpox virus into bioweapons, and these weapons may have fallen into
the wrong hands, according to the https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/bioterrorism/public/threat.html" rel="nofollow - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
And in 2017, scientists in Canada announced that they had https://www.livescience.com/59809-horsepox-virus-recreated.html" rel="nofollow - re-created the horsepox virus ,
a relative of smallpox, in a lab using DNA fragments. The findings
suggest scientists could also make the smallpox virus in a lab.
The new drug was tested in animals infected with viruses that are
closely related to the smallpox virus; however, it was not tested in
people infected with similar viruses, the FDA said. Rather, TPOXX was
approved under the FDA's Animal Rule, which allows animal studies to be
used to support approval when it is not feasible or ethical to conduct
studies of the drug's effectiveness in people. However, the drug was
tested for safety in more than 350 healthy people who did not have
smallpox. Source: https://www.livescience.com/63062-fda-approves-drug-for-smallpox.html" rel="nofollow - https://www.livescience.com/63062-fda-approves-drug-for-smallpox.html
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