ViraWall vs. Tamiflu^® — Comparing Safety and Effectiveness

Recently, scientists at Chang Gung University in Taiwan compared the relative effectiveness of ViraWall and Tamiflu —the most popular prescription drug for treating type A influenza, including the current H5N1 "bird flu."

Unlike Tamiflu, which is a pharmaceutical drug that works to disable an essential part of a type A influenza virus’s structure, ViraWall is a food-based, organic nutrient complex that works to protect cells from penetration by the virus.

In this study, the scientists determined the amount Tamiflu and ViraWall needed to block 50% of the spread of the virus in a cell culture. The numerical results, called IC50 — short for inhibitory concentration 50% — showed that it took 12.3 times less ViraWall to achieve the same virus inhibiting effects as Tamiflu.

The study also determined the relative cellular toxicity of ViraWall and Tamiflu, determining how high a concentration is required to kill 50% of the cells. This factor, called LC50 — short for lethal concentration 50% — was more than 3 times better for ViraWall than Tamiflu. This means that cells can tolerate much higher amount of ViraWall than Tamiflu, even though much less is required to be effective.

Putting these two numbers together determines the "safety margin" — a measure of how many times the effective concentration it takes to produce a toxic reaction. Larger numbers are better. In this experiment with a virulent type A influenza, the safety margin for Tamiflu was 72, while for ViraWall it was more than 2800!

	EFFECTIVENESS IC50 Lower is better	TOXICITY LC50 Higher is better	SAFETY MARGIN LC50 to IC50 ratio Higher is better
Tamiflu	0.173	12.50	72
Virawall	0.014	39.46	2818

As these results clearly demonstrate, ViraWall was 12.3 times more effective at inhibiting the spread of viral plaque than Tamiflu and more than 3 times less toxic to the experimental cells, providing a safety margin almost 40 times better.

Live Mice Study

Groups of mice were exposed to 3 different levels of an extremely pathogenic type A influenza virus. Half of the mice in each group were orally administered a small dose of ViraWall once per day, starting 6 hours after viral exposure. Researchers tracked body weight and mortality for all groups versus a control population fed ViraWall but not exposed to the virus.

Results: All unprotected animals died within 2 to 5 days of viral exposure, at a rate proportional to their viral load. All animals protected with ViraWall survived, independent of the their viral load. In other words, while the mice with even the smallest viral load all died from their influenza exposure, all mice protected with ViraWall survived – even those exposed to 100 times more virus.

Cell Culture Studies

Cell cultures tests were performed using standard MDCK cells exposed to Enterovirus-71, a potentially lethal intestinal virus. The first photo shows normal, uninfected cells seen through the microscope. The second picture shows the type of cytopathic damage that occurs when virus particles enter cells and replicate. The last picture shows how cells exposed to the same level of virus are protected when ViraWall is present. No viral cytopathic damage is observed and cells continue to function normally.

All studies conducted at the School of Medical Technology of Chang Gung University in Taiwan

ViraWall^® is a registered trademark of IMMUNECOLOGY, LTD.

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