Marion County Has First Animal Case of West Nile Virus

Readers of this article might appreciate knowing about an effective treatment for West Nile virus encephalitis that we've pioneered, and that we're currently using to help a police officer in Bryan, TX recover from paralysis. Like most of medicine, our treatment works best early in the course of the disease, during symptoms of headache and fever, before coma or paralysis set in. For this, people have to know about it ahead of time. We've been offering a free clinical trial for WNV for the past four years. Yet the only advice that the CDC and local public health authorities have given the public for the past four years is to just say "No" to mosquitoes. This, of course, is fairly impractical advice, and even more useless for a person who already has symptoms of the disease. Some reporters are beginning to take note, like Paul Taylor, health reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, who recently wrote about our treatment: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060811.HTAYLOR11/TPStory/specialScienceandHealth/columnists. We use safe, FDA-approved blood pressure pills to lower the innate immune response to viruses among people whose immune system overreacts too strongly to the virus. It turns out this means everybody in the general population except obviously immunosuppressed people: those with a kidney transplant, say, or non-functioning white blood cells because they have leukemia. Since we focus on the common immune overreaction, not on the specific virus, our approach should work for most viruses, including West Nile virus encephalitis, and most species. In a small case series so far, we've found that it works quite nicely in WNV. We'd like to collect more data to be sure. We published our initial results with 8 WNV patients in July, 2004 in a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry (ref 1). We’re now up to 23 patients now; 20 have shown a rapid clinical response, for an 87% treatment success rate. The most recent is a policeman in Texas. His right leg was paralyzed much worse than his left, and is rapidly recovering function, to the delight of his physician and his physical therapists at the Rehab Center where he's staying. So far, ours is the only published treatment showing efficacy for West Nile virus encephalitis. [It's reassuring that our protocol has been working in other species, too: in 6 of 12 birds (in 2004), and in 2 Idaho horses. For the first horse's story, please see: http://www.kbcitv.com/x78864.xml. ] Because our approach may be good for most viruses, especially the kind favored by bioterrorists, it was included in the Project BioShield II Act of 2005 introduced to the Senate by Senators Lieberman, Hatch, and Brownback (see Section 2151, "Report to Congress," of S. 975, available at: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-975. If you scroll down to p. 295, you'll come across the following: 15 SEC. 2151. REPORT TO CONGRESS. 16 Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment 17 of this Act, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control 18 and Prevention, in consultation with the Assistant Sec- 19 retary for Medical Readiness and Response of the Depart- 20 ment of Homeland Security and the Director of the Na- 21 tional Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease of the 22 National Institutes of Health, shall submit a report to 23 Congress that describes alternatives to traditional vaccines 24 and anti-viral therapeutics for viral diseases, including 25 negative immunomodulation compounds that partially S 975 PCS 296 1 suppress a macrophage-dependent innate immune re- 2 sponse of an individual to viral pathogens, in order to de- 3 crease morbidity and mortality from an excessive immune 4 response.) Like most bills introduced into the US Senate, S. 975 hasn't been brought to debate yet. We were asked to brief the White House on our "general viral antidote" in 2004, and we ourselves asked to brief the Dept. of Homeland Security and the NIH on it in the fall of 2004. Anyone can download the viral encephalitis trial protocol from our website, www.genomed.com by clicking on "WNV Trial." They can do this at any time of day or night. As soon as they show the protocol to their doctor, they can get started on the protocol. When people need to start our treatment, all they'll be sure of is that they have viral encephalitis, not which virus it is. (OUR APPROACH IS NOT MEANT FOR BACTERIAL MENINGITIS, WHICH IS LIFE-THREATENING. DOCTORS IN THE E.R. CAN TELL VIRAL FROM BACTERIAL DISEASE WITH A SPINAL TAP). The trial is free from our end, since we're still accumulating patient outcomes data. We simply request an email address to make clinical follow-up possible. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions anyone might have. Reference 1. Moskowitz DW, Johnson FE. The central role of angiotensin I-converting enzyme in vertebrate pathophysiology. Curr Top Med Chem. 2004;4(13):1433-54. PMID: 15379656 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]—see Table 2 for first 8 WNV patients. (This paper can be downloaded as a PDF file by clicking on paper #6 at: http://www.genomed.com/index.cfm?action=investoranddrill=publications ) Sincerely, Dave Moskowitz MD Chairman, CEO and Chief Medical Officer GenoMed, Inc. "Public health is our business(tm)" website: www.genomed.com