Results from the trial, which are published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, show that cold sores treated with SoloVir healed on average approximately a day and a half more quickly than those who received placebo. Median time to healing in patients in the active treatment group was 113 hours, compared to 148 hours in the placebo group.
Additionally, for a subgroup of patients that were treated at the first visible stage of infection (erythema stage), the difference in healing time between groups was three days (49 hours versus 120 hours).
This trial also demonstrated that the drug/device combination was safe and well-tolerated, with total incidences of adverse events reported similar to placebo.
Transport’s drug/delivery platform is based on the combination of iontophoresis, a technology employing a low-voltage electrical charge to locally deliver larger amounts of medications through the skin, and proprietary drug formulations optimized for electrokinetic delivery.
“The drug efficacy in this study is particularly noteworthy, given that this was a clinic-initiated study in which patients did not administer treatment until there was visible evidence of a lesion,” commented Dr Spotswood Spruance, co-author, principal investigator of the study and professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah.