Study Shows Frog Slime Can Kill Flu Viruses

Researchers at Emory University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the U.S. and Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology in India have identified a peptide (a short chain of amino acids) in the mucus secreted by a South Indian frog that can kill certain types of flu viruses. In the study, the peptide (which they named “urumin” after a curved sword that comes from the same region of India as the frog) was injected into the nasal passages of one group of the Hydrophylax bahuvistara frogs, while another group received an inactive control liquid, five minutes before infecting them with the flu virus. They were then given urumin or control daily for the next three days to compare how the infection affected the mice’s weight, how many mice died and how much flu virus was present in their lungs. They found urumin was effective at killing 60 percent of the eight types of H1N1 flu viruses tested, including the one that caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic. They also found it was effective at killing seven strains of H1N1 that were resistant to antiviral medicines such as Tamiflu.

According to the researchers, urumin is effective because it targets the part of the virus’s structure that is shared across different H1 strains, called the stalk region. Seventy percent of mice treated with urumin survived compared with only 20 percent of those given the control. However, urumin was effective in killing only less than half of the H3N2 strain.