When healthy people get these infections, they can become seriously ill. But when these viruses infect people with impaired immune systems or transplant patients taking immunity-suppressing drugs to prevent organ rejection, the bugs can be deadly. Pleconaril co-inventor Mark McKinlay, PhD, tells WebMD that the drug has been offered to such patients on a compassionate basis. Unfortunately most of these patients have been treated late in the course of their disease, but even so we have had some pretty spectacular results. While not nearly as dangerous as bacterial meningitis, the viral version starts out just the same.
People go to the emergency room, they want no light, their head feels like it's going to blow off.
The big difference is that they don't die, but in the beginning they're every bit as sick as people with bacterial meningitis. Sawyer, an investigator in pediatric trials of the drug, says that two trials enrolled children aged 4 to 14 years soon after a diagnosis of meningitis that appeared to be viral. The investigators rated the children's improvement both in terms of reported symptom improvement and upon their parents' assessment of their child's health. Especially for young children, we actually looked quite heavily at the parents' assessment. Ultimately that's how people will decide how to use a medication like this.