BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) professor of anesthesiology recently discovered that a drug commonly used for the treatment of arthritis also can be used to treat Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infection in infants and children worldwide. The study is published in the June issue of the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.

Current RSV immunization methods are not very effective, and the virus accounts for about 126,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States alone. With the support of an NIH MERIT award and funds from his endowment, Sadis Matalon, Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology at UAB and holder of the Alice McNeal Chair in Anesthesiology, led a research team of UAB experts to test the efficacy of a drug by treating RSV in mice models.

“While this provides us some great groundwork for developing the most effective treatment methods for humans, it’s just the beginning,” Matalon said.

Matalon says this research highlights the collaborative efforts among different departments at UAB. The findings would not have been possible without the contributions of Wayne Sullender, M.D., professor of pediatrics at UAB and RSV virologist; Ian Davis, co-inventor on the patent who earned his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Pathology at UAB in 2000 and received a special training grant from the NIH on this topic; and numerous others who contributed to the research and design of the study.

“We all work as a team,” Matalon said. “This work was made possible by valuable contributions from my collaborators.”

The study is available online at http://ajrcmb.atsjournals.org/.