About viruses: What you need to know!

Unlike bacteria, viruses are not a self-sustaining biological entity. they need to enter a cell to use its machinery and multiply. In that sense, we can consider a virus as a parasite. It is composed of a shell, called a capsid, inside which is a small portion of genetic material (DNA or RNA). For a long time, it was thought that viruses were much smaller than bacteria, but giant forms have recently been discovered (up to 1000 nm).

Viruses are caught by contagion, by crossing or rubbing shoulders with an already infected individual. If that person coughs or sneezes near another person, he or she projects viruses into the air that can be breathed in. Sometimes transmission occurs through direct or indirect contact: the sick person rubs the tip of the nose and then touches an object that is then touched.

Once the virus is inside the body, it will try to parasitize a cell in the body. To do this, it sticks to the cell membrane, penetrates the cell and releases its genetic material. The genetic material will force the cell to make hundreds of copies of the virus that will accumulate inside the cell. The vital functions taken over by the cell are therefore abandoned during the process until the weight of the virus copies makes the cell explode.

Viruses: How to fight them?

Influenza, colds, chickenpox, mononucleosis are common examples of viral diseases. There are others that are much more dangerous, such as AIDS, smallpox, hemorrhagic fever, recently COVID-19, etc…

In all cases, the first symptoms (fever, headache, fatigue) are due to the immune system’s reaction to the intruder. When the organism has already encountered the virus, it is much better able to fight it. This is why we cannot get chickenpox twice, or why we don’t need medicine if we have a cold. The immune system has stored the structure of the virus in its memory and is ready to send its specific antibodies in case of an attack. That’s why the vaccine is so important: a harmless version of the virus is injected so that the body is ready to eliminate it more easily when it encounters it again.

If the virus is very virulent, the immune system can quickly become overwhelmed. But because viruses use the host’s cellular machinery to reproduce within the cell itself, it is difficult to eliminate them without killing the host cell. For this reason, in a viral infection, drugs are more effective in treating the symptoms than in fighting the virus. There are, however, some antiviral drugs that disrupt the replication cycle of viruses. They can stop the progression of the virus but rarely stop the infection. Thus, the only reliable and effective methods of fighting viruses are prevention and vaccination.

New viruses

It’s well known that human viruses are constantly evolving. Worse still, they sometimes combine with other viruses, for example, those affecting animals, to give rise to new pathogenic forms. This was the case with the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed more than 20 million people in Europe in record time. More recently, the world has had a scare with the outbreak of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), Avian Influenza MERS and now COVID-19. Humanity is living with the fear of a new pandemic for which our bodies would be unprepared. The media, literature, and cinema are having a field day, always imagining the most extreme disaster scenarios. Even if they cannot be completely ruled out, it seems that we are much better prepared today for such risks (maybe Coronavirus be an exception). Our good knowledge of viruses and their genome, as well as our speed of detection, could well prevent us from such scenarios …

Stay Safe

Dr. Elix – Best Natural Remedies