Antiviral Drugs Against Severe Fever With Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus Infection

Takayama-Ito, Mutsuyo; Saijo, Masayuki

The efficacy of antibody-based treatment has been studied against SFTS disease. Generally, antibodies play a critical role in the treating a wide variety of viral diseases; such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (Ferrari et al., 2016) , diseases caused by ebola virus (Mendoza et al., 2017) and influenza (Nachbagauer and Krammer, 2017) . Antibody drugs neutralize viruses or bind to the virion to enhance antigen uptake by cytotoxic T cells, making them highly specific for the target virus. It was reported that antiserum of a patient recovered from SFTS completely protected mice from the lethal infection of SFTSV (Shimada et al., 2015) . It was also shown that antibodies against SFTSV Gn protein significantly reduced the fatality rate in mice infected with SFTSV, even when treatment was initiated from 3 days post inoculation . These reports suggested that antibodies alone or in combination with antiviral drugs could be used to treat patients with SFTS.