Antiviral Drugs Against Severe Fever With Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus Infection

Takayama-Ito, Mutsuyo; Saijo, Masayuki

CCBs, which are used to control cardiovascular diseases, have demonstrated significant effects against SFTSV replication both in vitro and in vivo . Notably, retrospectively conducted clinical study suggested that nifedipine remarkably reduced the case fatality rate in SFTS patients . Although nifedipine is administrated consistently for patients with cardiac disease, these findings are valuable for developing potential CCB-based therapeutics for SFTS. It is considered that the efficacy of nifedipine in treating patients with SFTS should be evaluated in a prospective manner. For clinical use, careful consideration of the risk-to-benefit value to the patient would be required because an overdose of CCBs has a high-risk of side effects, such as edema, liver damage, and death. The dose used for in vivo mouse study (100 mg/kg/day) was extremely higher than the dose generally used for humans (∼0.2-1.5 mg/kg/day). Still, these findings indicated the potential therapeutic effect of CCB treatment in patients with SFTS.