With more and more people contracting Zika infection in recent months, medical researchers are now looking at various existing drugs that could be used to prevent the continued spread of the disease and even cure it.

As of the moment, there are approved medications that could treat the Zika virus, a microorganism that is being linked to the development of birth defects in babies and a form of paralysis known as Guillain-Barré syndrome.

While efforts are being made in order to formulate a potential cure for the infection, new drugs typically take 10 to 20 years to develop and get approval.

This is why researchers have resorted to examining different medications that are already available in the market for their ability to block the Zika virus and prevent it from causing damage to the brain and nervous system of people.

"The sense of urgency is enormous," Mauro Martins Teixeira, an immunopharmacology expert at the University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, said. "In an emergency, everyone wants quick answers."

Teixeira said that the need to find an effective medication for the Zika infection has led virtually every medical researcher who specializes in antiviral drugs to test existing formulations against the virus.

Raymond Schinazi, head of the biochemical pharmacology laboratory at Emory University in Georgia, pointed out that aside from treating the infection, the ideal anti-Zika drug should also be able to prevent its spread similar to other antimalarial medications that people take before traveling to tropical countries.

The anti-Zika formulation should also be safe to use even by expectant mothers and those women who are old enough to become pregnant.

Schinazi has already looked at a 40-year-old medication that has been proven safe for pregnant women. He said that this specific drug has lost its patent, making it relatively affordable to purchase.

For his studies, Teixeira is focusing more on how to protect the brain of patients from the toxic effects of the Zika virus rather than preventing the infection. He discovered that an existing drug used to treat people with Alzheimer's disease known as memantine has the potential to protect cells from the virus.

Teixeira is now planning to carry out a clinical trial to find out whether memantine will be able to protect individuals from the harmful effects of the Zika virus.

Photo: Day Donaldson | Flickr