Researchers Claim Effective Shingles Treatment

Shingles, a painful skin condition marked by blistering around the eyes, affects millions of Americans, primarily those over age 50. Now, researchers say they have developed a compound that provides effective relief.

Researchers at the University of Georgia and Yale University developed the compound that they say attacks the root of the condition. The varicella-zoster virus (VZV) causes chickenpox in children and can return with a vengeance in adulthood.

The VZV virus from childhood chickenpox hides in the nerves, emerging most frequently in adults over the age of 60 as a blistering rash on one side of the body. The rate of complications, including nerve pain that can persist for months or years after the shingles attack is gone, also increases with age.

L-BHDA

The new anti-shingles agent is called L-BHDA and researchers are hopeful it may change life for millions of shingles sufferers. Rights to the shingles treatment have been licensed to Bukwang Pharmaceutical Company for preclinical investigations by the University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. and Yale University.

"We need new options for medications with increased potency and specificity that can treat VZV, including strains that may be resistant to existing drugs," said medicinal chemist David Chu, Distinguished Research Professor of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences at UGA, one of the inventors of L-BHDA.

A collaboration between Chu and co-inventor Yung-Chi (Tommy) Cheng, the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology at Yale, has resulted in an extensive portfolio of antiviral compounds that target such diseases as HIV, shingles, hepatitis and cancers.

More effective treatment?

Chu, who is head of the Drug Discovery Group in the UGA College of Pharmacy, said that although there are generic antiviral drugs to reduce the duration and pain of shingles, and a variety of pain medications and topical creams to relieve long-term pain, "They are only moderately effective. We need more effective anti-VZV agents.”

He noted that the new compound has been tested in the laboratory and demonstrated in mice models by a group of researchers headed by Jennifer Moffat, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

A vaccine to prevent shingles, available to older adults since 2006, can cut the likelihood of a shingles attack in half. However, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, only a small percentage of older people receive the shot, principally because of cost, lack of insurance reimbursement and shortage of supply.