Researchers Finally Have A Cure For Common Cold And Flu, And Even Deadly Strain Of Swine Flu

Influenza, also known as the flu, kills 6,50,000 people a year, and makes many more sick.

It doesn't matter if you get an annual flu shot either, as there are so many strains of it it's impossible to fully protect against. But now, there may actually be a cure.

Doctors at the Janssen Prevention Center and Scripps Research Institute are excited about a new discovery they've made, that could make for a much broader method of protecting against all the various strains of flu. More importantly, they think it can even help patients with infections strong enough to be deadly.

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The treatment is similar to other vaccines we commonly get, recreating the way the human body creates antibodies to fight viruses. So far, the only recipients of the treatment have been lab mice, meaning it still has to be tested on humans. However, even at lethal levels of infection, every single one of the mice treated with the new method recovered.

More importantly though, the researchers also grew human lung cells in a lab and infected them with influenza. They were also able to be cured with the new treatment, proving promising for future human trials.

Diseases like the measles, chickenpox, and others can all be protected against by a single vaccination in your childhood. That's because these viruses are virtually the same as they were decades ago. WIth influenza however, it's a constantly changing and evolving virus, which is why there are so many strains of it. As a result, no single vaccine has so far been able to protect people from the different kinds of flu. Even worse, antivirals administered after people have contracted the flu can even serve to make that strain more drug-resistant.

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The new treatment is instead a small molecule modelled after human antibodies, that act on broader areas of influenza that stay the same across different strains. It tackles a part of the virus that's responsible for splitting open our cell membranes and allowing an infection to happen, as this part remains largely unchanged.

Now all it would take is a few years of tweaking and human trials and we might even be able to completely obliterate the flu forever. Sorry if that interferes with one of your excuses to skip work though.

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