Antiviral Drugs Against Severe Fever With Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus Infection

Takayama-Ito, Mutsuyo; Saijo, Masayuki

Sufficient animal models are required to evaluate the efficacy of antiviral drugs in the treatment of SFTSV infections. However, adult mice and hamsters are not susceptible to SFTSV infection and non-human primate models show only mild symptoms similar to those of SFTS in humans (Jin et al., 2015) . Only several immunodeficient or immature animal models are available . Mice deficient in α/β interferon receptor (IFNAR −/− ) (Liu et al., 2014; Tani et al., 2016) and mice and Syrian hamsters deficient for the gene encoding signal transducer and the activator of transcription 2 (STAT2 −/− ) Yoshikawa et al., 2019) were found to be susceptible to SFTSV infection following subcutaneous inoculation, and newborn mice and rats were susceptible to SFTSV infection when inoculated intracerebrally (Chen et al., 2012; Zivcec et al., 2013; Ning et al., 2019) . Table 2 presents animal models that have been used to determine the efficacy of antiviral drugs against SFTSV infections.