Thats heavily on the semantics of what is or isnt an antiviral - there are
those who would say that interferon is not an antiviral compound because
it triggers an immune system cascade that then deals with the virus and
only the nucleoside analogues are true antivirals and its an extention
from microbiology. Most people view in the field is that if it has a
specific or selective action that interferes with the virus lifecycle and
doesnt simply blast everything out of existence its reasonable to describe
it as an antiviral - basically because of the weird biological state of
viruses of being biologically active but not fulfilling the standard
criteria of life.

One paper that indicates this dichotomy is the following

Brown, McCrary and Tyring (2002) Antiviral Agents: Nonantiviral drugs.
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology Vol 47, p581-599
Where the writer has sat on the fence. Antiviral they are but he steps
away from the phrase 'Antiviral Drug' and uses antiviral agent. Antiviral
is antiviral to my mind and that of most other people. You will alswys see
someone stand up and do this semantic argument whenever something that
doesnt hit the DNA is described as being an antiviral, being antiviral in
action, having antiviral properties or being an antiviral agent. The usual
response is along the lines of 'this semantic argument has been dealt with
many times, the current view is this is a reasonable description'

Abreva selectively interferes with enveloped viruses replication.
One standard paper on the stuff;
KatzDh et al (1991) Antiviral activity of 1-docosanol, an inhibitor of
lipid-enveloped viruses including herpes simplex. PNAS USA Vol 88,
10825-10829

Yes that particular paper is old but the view still holds as the argument
over antiviral/drug/agent/action/etc has raged since interferon was
compared with ACV et al in the 80s and most people in the field do
consider it to be antiviral due to its selective action and specific
interference of a lifecycle pathway (ie cellular entry) - certainly ISAR
accept papers on it for ICAR and their brief is antivirals.

So I'll stand by describing it as an antiviral (and accept it being
marketed as such) while agreeing there is this argument around which some
adhere to based on the semantics of what the word antiviral means in what
precise context...ie yes it is not a classic antiviral that interferes
with the DNA replication step.

Tim
--
When playing rugby, its not the winning that counts, but the taking apart
ICQ: 5178568

Actually, the latest is "Viroxyn".

It's a tincture of benzalchonium chloride in a vial which works as a
germicidal to kill the active virus in the lesion.

Pain and burning gone in 15 to 20 minutes. And the lesion heals in most
cases in 3.6 days.

See it here:

www.ColdSoreGone.com

Allen