Will arbidol receive international acclaim?
This is a tough question. As we all know, the registration system for drugs in the West and in the U.S. is very stringent, and very bureaucratic. There is a known precedent; the WHO has already accepted another of our antiviral preparations. This was rimantadine, and this was still in the Soviet era. Rimantadine has an interesting history. Americans discovered it, but for some reason they abandoned research on it. Around the same time they introduced amantadine, which has an analogous antiviral action. Then the USSR began to study, make and use rimantadine. The drug became popular, and was used widely in clinical practice. After some time, the WHO recognized it as an effective medicine for the prevention and treatment of influenza. This happened all because the Soviet Union provided the training ground for experimenting with the drug. (Interestingly, even the Americans now recognize rimantadines advantages compared to amantidine.) The situation now with arbidol is quite similar. The us
