An elderly patient comes to see you complaining of a very painful rash. When he lifts his shirt, you see that he has a rash of small blisters (vesicles) on one side of his back. You think he likely has shingles, caused by varicella-zoster virus (VZV), a double-stranded DNA virus that belongs to the Herpesviridae family. You explain this to your patient, who asks you to please give him an antibiotic for his infection. You tell him an antibiotic will not help him, and give him information on virus infections and their treatment.
Acyclovir is selective and low in toxicity, causing little harm to uninfected cells, because
Question 12 options:
host cells have an enzyme that prevents the conversion of the medication into its active form.
only a virally encoded enzyme can convert the medication into its active form (from nucleotide analog to nucleoside analog).
only a virally encoded enzyme can convert the medication into its active form (from nucleoside analog to nucleotide analog).
host cells have the ability to repair the damage caused by nucleotide analogs.
viral DNA is structurally very different from cellular DNA.