Lassa fever future or investigational therapies

Extensive studies are being conducted to find new and improved mode of treatment for Lassa virus which include vaccines, medicine and other novel approaches. An antiviral drug that has been shown to be more effective than ribavirin in treating experimentally infected guinea pigs is under investigation.

• Researchers at the USAMRIID facility, where military biologists study infectious diseases, have a promising vaccine candidate. They have developed a replication-competent vaccine against Lassa virus based on recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vectors expressing the Lassa virus glycoprotein. After a single intramuscular injection, test primates have survived lethal challenge, while showing no clinical symptoms.^[1]
• Siga Technologies is developing an antiviral drug that has been shown effective in treating experimentally infected guinea pigs. In a study conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), treatment with ST-193 once a day for 14 days resulted in significant reduction in mortality (71% of the animals survived at the low dose), whereas all untreated animals and those treated with ribavirin died within 20 days of the infection.^[2]
• Studies are being conducted to improve the following aspects^[3].

• Efficacy of the supportive treatment.

• Specific studies for early goal directed therapy.

• Optimizing Ribavirin therapy

• Check whether shorter duration would be helpful.
• Evaluation of oral ribavirin for post exposure prophylaxis.

• Testing efficacy of new anti-arenavirus drugs.

• Small interfering RNAs.
• Novel nucleoside analogs.

• Testing efficacy of non-arenavirus-specific drugs.

• Interferon alfacon-1.
• Recombinant activated protein C.
• Vaccines with recombinant and attenuated viruses, DNA vaccines, alphavirus replicons.

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