FLICKR, NIAIDUnsure of its origin, mode of transmission, and the best course of treatment, clinicians have been working to quell Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) on a case-by-case basis since it emerged in Saudi Arabia last year. Writing in Nature Medicine today (September 8), a team led by investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) presents a therapeutic approach validated in nonhuman primates. Because the treatment was successful in vivo, the authors recommend it be used to treat human MERS patients. NIAID’s Darryl Falzarano and his colleagues showed in a rhesus macaque model of the disease that treatment with interferon-α2b and the nucleoside inhibitor ribavirin improved clinical outcome when administered eight hours post-infection.
“Our in vitro data suggested that we needed both together for it to work,” Falzarano told The Scientist. “We went with those two drugs because they’re available on the shelf, they’re approved for use in humans [and] easily accessible.”
“We started this combination therapy not because we think it is the greatest treatment strategy, but because it is something that can be applied quickly,” added study coauthor Heinz Feldmann, chief of NIAID’s Laboratory of Virology. “This is one option that now is out there.”
Although its first symptoms—fever, cough, and shortness of breath—are typical of most lower respiratory illnesses, MERS is an infectious disease unlike any seen in humans before. The coronavirus (CoV) that causes it appears similar to the infectious agent behind the 2002-2003 ...
