Antiviral therapy and prevention against hantavirus infections

Abstract

Hantaviruses are emerging zoonoses hosted by small mammals. In humans, they cause two diseases. Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome is mainly caused by Dobrava-Belgrade virus, Puumala virus, Seoul virus and Hantaan virus in Asia and Europe. On the other hand, the most important causes of hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome are Sin Nombre virus and Andes virus in Americas. Ribavirin yet remains the only licensed drug against the hantavirus infections, but its sufficient antiviral activity remains an issue under discussion. There are still no available vaccines against hantaviruses except of some inactivated virus vaccines licensed only in East-Asian countries. Some of the vaccines are under development in pre-clinical stages. The review discuses about specific compounds with approved antiviral activity against hantaviruses. Other approaches such as development of vaccines, are compiled as well.

Vaccines and Therapeutics Against Hantaviruses

“…As a potent mutagen, RBV could induce RNA mutagenesis in subsequent generations of HTNV virions (Chung et al, 2013), while it is not expected that ETAR induces mutation, probably due to the lack of pseudobase pair presence (Chung et al, 2008). Additionally, RBV was reported to modulate host immune responses by suppressing interleukin-10-producing regulatory T cells (Kobayashi et al, 2012), while there is no evidence showing that ETAR could exert immunoregulatory effects (Szabo, 2017). Both in vitro and in vivo antihantaviral activity of RBV and ETAR have been confirmed by a series of studies.…”

The ABC7 regimen: a new approach to metastatic breast cancer using seven common drugs to inhibit epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and augment capecitabine efficacy

“…Ribavirin remains useful in treating human respiratory syncytial virus infections and selected other rarer virus infections such as those of the hantavirus group 93. Ribavirin is currently being investigated in numerous clinical trials for its therapeutic activity in various cancers, particularly acute myeloid leukemia (NCT02109744, NCT02073838), head and neck cancer (NCT01268579), and notably for ABC7, metastatic breast cancer (NCT01056757).…”

Antiviral Therapeutic Approaches for Human Rhinovirus Infections

“…Coronaviruses associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV) or Middle East respiratory syndrome have also been studied in the context of ribivirin therapy, although the outcomes have been mixed, and conjunctive therapy with pegylated IFNα-2a has again been suggested [ 24 , 25 ]. In addition, ribavirin has also been utilized in the treatment of several viral hemorrhagic fevers, caused by pathogens such as hantavirus and Lassa virus, but also in the treatment of nairovirus, the cause of the tick-borne disease Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. However, the drug is not reported to be active against Marburg virus, Ebola virus and dengue virus, and only appears to have limited activity against HSV, but not HIV [ 29 , 30 , 31 ].…”