ePillz.com - Famvir - Single-Day Treatment for Herpes

Famvir - Single-Day Treatment for Herpes

July 28, 2006 - Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation –

Famvir (famciclovir) has received the FDA approval as a single-day treatment of genital herpes and cold sores recurrences. The drug maker Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation reported about this approval in its official press-release, dated July 28.

Herpes is the common viral disease affecting either genitals or mouth area (known also as cold sores). For the time being, neither genital herpes nor cold sores can be cured completely, since there is no medication to kill the herpes simplex virus once and forever. So, the main goal of herpes treatment is to decrease the duration of outbreaks and to ease the severity of symptoms, such as itching and pain.

There are episodic treatment of herpes (medications are taken only when the recurrences occur) or suppressive treatment (medications are taken daily for a long period of time to suppress the virus and decrease the frequency and duration of outbreaks). Famvir is the first and the only medication, which is approved by the American Food and Drug Administration as a single-day treatment of herpes outbreaks.

Novartis says that there is a “narrow window of opportunity” for the treatment of herpes when the outbreak is triggered. The first few hours of an outbreak are very important for the effectiveness of treatment, because the virus replicates itself very actively. That is why the single-day dose of Famvir should be taken within 6 hours after the first symptoms appear. The signs of herpes outbreak are tingling, itching, burning or lesion development on genitals (if it is genital herpes) or on the mouth area (if it is cold sores).

For the time being, there are two doses for the one-day treatment of herpes: Famvir 1000 mg to be used to stop the development of genital herpes and 1500 mg dose is recommended to treat cold sores.

The approval of Famvir, featuring increased strength, was based on several studies, which showed the following results: - treating genital herpes with single-day doses of Famvir helped to reduce the time to heal non-aborted lesions by almost two days (4 days in comparison to 6 days, when herpes was treated with placebo); - Famvir also significantly reduced the duration of genital herpes symptoms, such as burning, tingling, itching, pain, and tenderness in patients with lesions (3 day with Famvir vs. 5 days with placebo).

The same positive results were received from the studies focused on treating cold sores with Famvir single-day doses. The most common side effects of Famvir during the studies were headache, nausea and diarrhea.

Taking into account that herpes is a very common disease all over the world (only in the USA about 50 million people are infected with genital herpes and more than 165 million suffer from cold sores recurrences), the opportunity to treat herpes with oral pills, taken twice for only one day, opens a new possibility for herpes management and significantly reduces the negative impact of the disease on the life quality and comfort.

Nick

External resources
http://www.pharma.us.novartis.com/newsroom/pressReleases/releaseDetail.jsp?PR...
http://www.famvir.com/info/about/patient_info.jsp#para9
http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/126/116186.htm?pagenumber=1