Newly-developed drug may be possible to cure tick disease

Japanese researchers recently announced that animal experiments have shown the drug Favipiravir is effective for the treatment of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome which takes ticks as infection vectors. Since it has gone through security check as influenza drugs, Favipiravir is expected to be used to treat this "Tick disease" soon.

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, commonly known as "tick disease", is an acute infectious disease caused by a new kind of Bunia virus and this virus takes ticks for the infection vectors. In western Japan, there are 170 cases being reported in the past three years, including 46 deaths. There are no effective therapeutic drugs and vaccines at present.

Researchers at National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Japan say they made the laboratory mice infected with the relevant virus, and then let them take Favipiravir within five days. Comparing the mice above with mice without treatment and mice taking antiviral drugs Ribavirin, the researchers found that mice without treatment almost all died; about 40% of the mice taking ribavirin died; while mice taking Favipiravir all survived.

In another experiment, the research team postponed Favipiravir to the mice infected with virus. The findings showed that, the mice all survived even the drugs were taken on the third day of infection; there are still about half of the mice survived when the drugs were taken in the fifth day of infection.

The drug Favipiravir was developed by Pittsburgh Labbe Toyama Chemical Company, and was approved to be produced and sold as a new anti-flu drug in Japan in 2014. As an approved drug in the market, its safety and its side effects are relatively clear, thus it is expected to be used to treat "tick disease" soon.

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