Are antiviral drugs antibiotics?

Some antiviral drugs are also antibiotics, especially antiviral drugs for treating respiratory and infectious diseases, which are common antibiotics. They will inevitably cause some harm to people's bodies and will produce a lot of adverse reactions after taking them. However, antiviral drugs are not just antibiotics, there are also some Chinese herbal medicines and Chinese patent medicines, and these side effects will be relatively smaller.

Chinese Herbal Medicine

Studies have confirmed that some Chinese medicines have very strong antiviral effects. Single Chinese medicines used in clinical prevention and treatment of viral diseases include heat-clearing medicines such as Isatis root, Scutellaria baicalensis, Coptis chinensis, Phellodendron chinense, Forsythia suspensa, Honeysuckle, and Phyllanthus urinaria, and antipyretic medicines such as Ephedra, Cassia twig, Elsholtzia ciliata, Perilla leaf, Saposhnikovia divaricata, and mint.

Chinese patent medicine

The main antiviral Chinese patent medicines are: Gan Ke Shuang Qing Capsules (clears heat and detoxifies. Used for acute upper respiratory tract infection, acute bronchitis with intense heat in the lungs, symptoms include fever, cough, headache, nasal congestion, red tongue tip and edges, thin yellow tongue coating and other viral infection-induced diseases). There are many types of anti-cold medicines, such as Furen Antiviral Oral Liquid (clears away heat and dampness, cools blood and detoxifies.

It is suitable for wind-heat cold, fever caused by febrile disease and upper respiratory tract infection, influenza, mumps and other viral infections), Sangju cold tablets, Yinqiao Jiedu pills (a Chinese patent medicine for treating the initial stage of febrile disease, fever, chills, thirst, headache, cough, sore throat and other wind-heat symptoms), Lingqiao Jiedu pills, Lingyang cold tablets (clearing away heat and relieving exterior symptoms. It is used for influenza, colds, coughs, dizziness, fever, sore throat), Jiuwei Qianghuo pills, Shensu Lifei pills, Tongxuan Lifei pills, Jingfang Chongji, Shuanghuanglian oral liquid (mainly used to treat symptoms such as headache, fever, cough and sore throat caused by exogenous wind-heat type colds), etc.

Western medicine

There are five main types:

Drugs for respiratory virus infections, such as amantadine, rimantadine, ribavirin, etc.; drugs for immunodeficiency virus infections, such as zidovudine, zalcitabine, abacavir, etc.; drugs for hepatitis virus infections, such as interferon α, lamivudine, etc.; drugs for herpes virus infections, such as iodine, acyclovir, phthalamide, imiquimod, etc.

In addition to isolating the source of infection and cutting off the route of transmission, immunization prevention is an important and effective measure. There are artificial automatic immunization such as vaccination with live attenuated virus vaccines (polio vaccine, smallpox vaccine and measles vaccine, etc.) and inactivated virus vaccines (influenza vaccine, rabies vaccine, etc.).

In particular, the use of live attenuated virus vaccines can often achieve long-lasting and effective preventive effects. The second is artificial passive immunization, which can provide short-term prevention by injecting convalescent serum and immunoglobulin from patients, such as convalescent serum and immunoglobulin G from measles patients to prevent measles, and high-priced hepatitis B immunoglobulin to prevent hepatitis B. Peptide vaccines and genetic engineering vaccines have been studied and applied, and have the advantages of high efficiency, safety, and large-scale production, but further research and improvement are needed.