Antiviral Gum Gives Epidemiologists Something To Chew On

With viruses on the rise, of course one of our biggest weapons against them is vaccination, but that approach has its limitations:

• In some places such as the US, anti-vaccine sentiments are high, and a vaccine is only as good as its uptake (i.e. if people don’t take it, they will more likely catch the disease and pass it on, including to some people who cannot be vaccinated, so non-vaccinators create a hole in herd immunity)
• Many vaccines can become outdated when viruses mutate more quickly than vaccines can be developed (we’ve seen a lot of this with COVID and Flu viruses, and that’s why we keep needing new ones)
• There are some viruses for which we simply do not yet have vaccines; sometimes this is the case even for very common viruses like Herpes simplex. or, indeed, the common cold (Rhinovirus sp.).

So, antivirals definitely have their place too. To be clear about the difference:

• A vaccine forewarns the immune system “watch out for this thing that you might encounter in the future, and prepare a defense for it according to these specifications” (it only helps if you aren’t already infected with the thing it’s vaccinating against, because otherwise the warning is too late and your body is already trying to mount a defense)
• An antiviral kills, inactivates, or otherwise severely inconveniences the virus directly (it only helps if there is a virus there to fight)

How the antiviral gum works

In few words: you chew it, the antiviral substance is then in your saliva, and it kills/inactivates/inconveniences the virus at the site of infection (e.g. your respiratory tract)

In the case of this specific antiviral gum, it’s more in the category of “severely inconveniences”, because the antiviral substance is a protein trap that binds to the virus, rendering it near-harmless.

In essence, therefore, it works less like a vaccine and more like a facemask (except it’s trapping the virus on the molecular level, rather than trying to stop aerosolized droplets from moving around on the macro level).

This was first developed as a possible tool against COVID:

Debulking SARS-CoV-2 in saliva using angiotensin converting enzyme 2 in chewing gum to decrease oral virus transmission and infection

…and this in turn was based on previous work quite early in 2020:

A Carbohydrate-Binding Protein from the Edible Lablab Beans Effectively Blocks the Infections of Influenza Viruses and SARS-CoV-2

And yes, those are lablab beans, as in Lablab purpureus, also called hyacinth beans, which may not be available in all supermarkets, but are not very obscure either (common throughout most of Africa and the tropics).

Most recently, researchers have found that 40mg of the broad-spectrum (as in, it affects many viruses) antiviral trap protein, as delivered by a 2g piece of gum, was sufficient to reduce viral loads by more than 95%, including for SARS-CoV-2 as well as H5N1, H3N2, and H7N9 (various kinds of bird flu that affect humans), and HSV-1 and HSV-2 (the two most common variants of herpes, including cold sores):

Debulking influenza and herpes simplex virus strains by a wide-spectrum anti-viral protein formulated in clinical grade chewing gum

You can also read a pop-science article about it, with links to more details, here:

Antiviral chewing gum shows promise in reducing influenza and herpes spread

Want to learn more?

Check out:

Winning The Biological Arms Race: Could This Be “The Ultimate Booster”?

Take care!