Ah, true. Well, that’s even stupider.
I am on my knees right now offering every supplication I can possibly think of to the Gods of the Internet that this thread doesn’t get locked. This is just too entertaining to arbitrarily kill.
Smeghead & Washoe: Instead of making stupid remarks why don’t you give me a scientific explanation otherwise let me apply your logic to conclude that because you have stupid names (was a hoe?) (smeg head?) what you say must be stupid as well. Besides learn how to read the question properly before you answer it Smeghead.
As far the people who gave a normal response: Artemis - are you sure viruses (herpes in particular) do just fine in high oxygen environments? I read a long article talking about how they do not. And how does a DNA strand survive in a nerve cell? Does it need some sort of upkeep or energy?
DNA is quite hardy, relative to other similar molecules (RNA). Think about it, do you want your genetic material, the blueprint of what you are, as an organism, to be stored in some flimsy, easily degradable stuff?
Second, DNA is stored usually inside the nucleus, to keep it protected (even though it is more stable than other molecules, you want to keep your blueprint in a safe).
If the environment outside the cell has a high oxygen content, but the cell itself is able to survive it, then whatever is inside of that cell is safe. So DNA that is inside of that cell is safe.
All cells that have a nucleus have DNA. Viruses also can carry DNA as their genetic material (they can also have their blueprint stored in RNA, unlike cells).
Dear God, this is pure gold. OK, I’ll indulge you. I have no opinion on the H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub] woo, but whatever happened with that notion that was floating around in the 80s that BHT would keep herpes in check? The deal supposedly was that BHT would dissolve into the virus’ lipid coating and disrupt it to the point where the virus would disintegrate. But if I remember my second-year biology text right, the herpes virus isn’t lipid coated. So I guess that’s probably why you don’t hear about it anymore. I would seriously like to know if there’s any validity to it at all, though.
I wonder if nasal douching with peroxide would do anything about these insidious sneezing fits I’ve been having ever since the Reagan administration. You have no idea how annoying it is to go wa-shoo, wa-shoo, wa-shoo 1000 friggin’ times a day…
Got a cite for that “long article” ?
What more explanation do you need? It was clearly explained that catalase breaks down H2O2 into water and oxygen gas. Water is water and the extra oxygen can be used in non-destructive cellular processes (most notably at the end of the electron transport chain by which cells make most of their energy). Furthermore, topically applying peroxide won’t get it to soak into your neurons, and ingesting it will probably just result in the molecule radicalizing in your stomach.
That said, I wonder if anyone has done a study to see if host DNA repair enzymes will dock to and function on the HSV genome… if not, it would be interesting to see if a therapy could be made by attrition, providing a lightly genotoxic compound that would result in reliably reparable host DNA cleavage but breaks up the viral genome. Even that would seem like a good way to clear Herpes but end up with cancer a few years later.
I think the best approach might be to target the LAT, perhaps via RNAi. I haven’t read anything about Herpes since ~2010 though, so my opinion is stale, if not uneducated.
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clearlsky1, insults are not permitted in General Questions. This is an official warning. Do not do this again.
Colibri
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PS. Incidentally, Smeghead (whose name I believe is a Red Dwarf reference) knows far more about this subject than you do (and I do also). The idea that hydrogen peroxide could be used to treat herpes is in fact very, very stupid. Smeghead has given you a scientific explanation.
Oral herpes can be cured with a drug that activates the virus and subsequently eradicates it.
Certainly, if you so desire.
Follows is A List of Scientific Reasons That It Is Very Very Stupid to Believe That Drinking Dilute Hydrogen Peroxide Will Cure Herpes Simplex Infection.
As I understand it, your hypothesis is that drinking hydrogen peroxide will somehow increase the oxygen level in your body, and that this increased oxygen level will somehow destroy the virus in the cells. Correct? I will apply the most reasonable interpretation and assume that the oxygen is working through oxidative damage, since that is the primary effect hydrogen peroxide and other reactive oxidative species have on biological tissues. Note that I am helpfully suggesting a mechanism for how hydrogen peroxide could work as a cure, which you have so far failed to do. So I’m doing a major part of your homework for you.
Let’s work backward, starting with oxidative damage destroying the virus and working back to the moment you put the hydrogen peroxide in your mouth, and see if we can figure out how many problems we encounter.
-First, let’s look at the neuron in the trigeminal ganglion, where HSV is known to go dormant. In this cell, the virus exists only as a stretch of DNA integrated into your own genome. I suppose we could speculate about what hydrogen peroxide does (or more accurately, doesn’t do) to replicating viral proteins, but in order for it to be a “cure”, it must be able to eradicate the viral genome completely. This is far more challenging than preventing protein synthesis, so let’s examine that.
So, what does hydrogen peroxide, and more generally, oxidative damage do in a cell? Well, you’re in luck! Among other things, it causes major damage to DNA! YAY! The problem here is one of discrimination. In order for this to be a cure, it must selectively destroy viral DNA and leave human DNA alone. But there is no chemical difference between the two. The only difference is in the sequence of bases. A chemical cannot read the bases - certainly not a chemical as simple as hydrogen peroxide. Thus, what would actually happen if you had enough oxidative damage to have an effect is that the entire DNA content of the cell would start being destroyed. There are two possible end results of this - either your neurons (and, incidentally, every other cell in your body, but we’ll get more into this later) would just die, leaving you without feeling in your lower face, or they’d become cancerous.
-But we’re ignoring the role of DNA repair. The cell has systems to detect high levels of oxidative damage and fix any problems that it causes. No problem here, really - we just need to up the levels of oxidizing agent to overwhelm repair capacity. So we just need to up the amount of hydrogen peroxide to “a metric shitload”.
-So now we have a whole lot of hydrogen peroxide circulating in your bloodstream, in order to get enough of it into your neuron to cause so much damage that the cell can’t repair it fast enough. Two further problems arise here:
-First is another issue of discrimination. The hydrogen peroxide doesn’t “know” that it’s only supposed to go to the neuron in question. So you’re delivering a massive dose of hydrogen peroxide to every cell in the body simultaneously, where, as we’ve just shown, it proceeds to destroy all of the DNA it can find.
-Second is the concept of homeostasis. The human body really doesn’t like having any of its chemical levels perturbed, and has evolved some very powerful methods to prevent it. There are chemical buffers and enzymes and other mechanisms to respond to any sort of perturbation. This is actually a major problem with drug discovery, because when you introduce a new drug into a human body, what usually happens is that the body finds a way to prevent it from doing anything whatsoever. The practical upshot of this is that you can add several metric shitloads of hydrogen peroxide into the body without it doing anything at all. Far from sort of vaguely “increasing oxygen levels” throughout the body, the hydrogen peroxide would be neutralized long, LONG before it ever made it through the bloodstream to your neurons. Your body likes its oxygen levels right where they are, thank you very much, and will work to keep them there. As a for instance, there are several enzymes called “superoxide dismutases” that are present in every cell, whose job it is to take hydrogen peroxide and other reactive oxidative species and turn them into harmless chemicals like water. They’re very very good at their job. Did you know, for instance, that your mitochondria are all constantly pumping out loads and loads of these chemicals all the time as a byproduct of metabolism, and these SOD enzymes prevent them from doing exactly the kind of damage that we’re suggesting would have to happen as part of a cure? But anyway…
-All this is assuming the chemical even makes it into your bloodstream in the first place. Which of course it won’t. Keep in mind that you’re suggesting that it enters the system via the digestive tract. I was going to talk about the fact that the digestive mucosal cells are very selective in what they uptake into the body, but on further reflection, I think hydrogen peroxide may be small enough to freely diffuse through membranes, so I’ll give you a freebie there. However, I’ll point out that in the intestines are lots and lots of bacteria, and most bacteria make lots and lots of catalase, which as I mentioned before, turns hydrogen peroxide into water and hydrogen very very efficiently.
-But still, before it can get to the intestines to be absorbed, assuming it makes it past the bacteria, the peroxide has to pass through the upper digestive system, including that big blob of acid known as the stomach. I’m not enough of a chemist to tell you exactly what happens there, but I’d bet good money that it’s not going to pass through unscathed.
-And that’s assuming it makes it to the stomach. First it has to be swallowed and go over and past a whole lot of human tissue. Which also makes a lot of catalase.
So, let’s recap.
You’re suggesting that swallowing a bit of dilute hydrogen peroxide will kill the herpes virus hiding in your neural cells.
I am suggesting the following obstacles:
-It would be destroyed by catalase before it even gets to the stomach
-More would be destroyed by reactions in the stomach
-What survives would be destroyed by bacteria in the intestines
-Once it makes it into the bloodstream, homeostatic mechanisms such as the SOD enzymes and chemical buffers would prevent even relatively large doses of it from having any effect
-Any surviving chemical would be equally distributed throughout the body, rather than concentrating where it’s needed
-The peroxide that makes it into the affected neuron would damage all DNA generally, rather than specifically affecting the herpes virus genome
-Cellular DNA repair mechanisms ensure that the required level of DNA damage would need to be extreme to be effecting, which has the corollary that you’d essentially end up killing the patient.
That’s just off the top of my head. This really isn’t my field. I study fruit fly ovaries. However, if you’d like to explain why you feel that these obstacles are not valid, I’d be fascinated to read your rebuttal. Let me know if you have any further questions.
You got a cite for that?
Thank you very much for spoiling the thread with facts. Now our two drive-by posters will never return absolutely ruining my day. Have you no shame?
If it will make you happy, I’ll start a thread asking if probiotics will cure my child’s MMR vaccine-caused autism.
Sorry to interupt the woo, but can anyone help me find a cite for this?
That is very interesting if true. I have to confess, I’m not too good at searching, so I can’t find anything about this.
Let me see if I can locate where I read that.
Even if there were such a drug, the eradication of the active viruses would not eradicate the latent viruses in the ganglia. A few years ago, I took part in a clinical study testing the efficacy of various treatments. Included in the study were hydrocortisone (a salve which I have found quite effective in the past), ether solution (which I have also found effective), and a prescription drug, Zovirax, or a combo of two or more. No mention of any other treatment was offered, and I did not know which I had, but it worked to completely eliminate the sore in a few days (as does any of the above treatments alone, as I have tried all 3 separately). That doesn’t, however, eliminate the latent viruses. I had to wait until I got a cold sore before I started the testing. They had no way to activate the virus. I had to bide my time.
Oh, would you, please? Then perhaps you might explain how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
I originally read ‘probiotics’ as ‘potatoes’, which had precisely zero effect on the underlying sense of this statement.
Don’t be an idiot. Sheep bladders CAUSE earthquakes.
I spent an hour last night googling my way through every combination of key terms I could think of and could not find the original source of my knowledge, which is making me nuts.
I believe there is a Scientific American article addressing the theory that microbes could be causative agents in certain types of mental illness, and I think this may be where I read it. However, I no longer have the issue, and the full article is behind a pay wall.
The only other evidence I can find is anecdotal in nature, but that doesn’t make for a valid cite. Should I locate the article or paper where I originally read it, I’ll post it here. Sorry for the disappointment.