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U.S. scientists say they may have found the "Achilles' heel" of the H5N1 bird-flu virus and other influenza strains. This weak point may offer a target for new drugs to fight the viruses, the researchers say in a report to be published Thursday in the journal Nature.
The potential vulnerability is a loop in the long, flexible protein tail that's essential for flu virus replication. A single mutation in the amino building blocks that comprise this loop is enough to stop the virus from replicating, Agence France Presse reported.
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"We know from previous genetic studies that this tail loop is almost identical across strains of influenza A, so drugs that target the tail have a high potential of being effective across multiple strains, including the H5N1 strains," research team leader Yizhi Jane Tao, of Rice University in Houston, said in a prepared statement.
"Such new antivirals are especially needed at the moment as some H5N1 viruses are resistant to the flu drug Tamiflu," Tao noted.
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