Ribavirin is effective against drug-resistant H7N9 influenza virus infections
Dear Editor,In February and March 2013,a novel influenza A (H7N9)virus emerged in China,causing an acute respiratory distress syndrome and occasionally multiple organ failure with high fatality rates in humans (Li et al.,2014).A total of 681 laboratory-confirmed cases and 275 deaths have been reported as of November 13th,2015,with a fatality rate of 40％ (http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/HAl_Risk_Assessment/en/).H7N9 has been evolving and established amongst chickens in China over the past two years with occasional human infections (Lam et al.,2015;Su et al.,2015),thus posing a threat to public health.In the absence of an annually-updated effective vaccine,antiviral drugs constitute the first line of defense against H7N9 infections.H7N9 viruses already possess natural resistance to M2-ion channel blockers (amantadine and rimantadine)when it first emerged in 2013 (Gao et al.,2013).Therefore neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs),which include oseltamivir (TamifluH),zanamivir (RelenzaH) and peramivir constitute the main antiviral drugs against H7N9 infections (Hu et al.,2013;Wu et al.,2013).However,treatment with NAIs against H7N9 infections has resulted in the emergence of drug-resistant mutant viruses,as soon as 1～9 days after administration (Gao et al.,2013;Hu et al.,2013).Moreover,the first H7N9 isolate (A/Shanghai/1/2013(H7N9),SH-H7N9)was resistant to oseltamivir (Gao et al.,2013).
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This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program973 Program Nos.2013CB531502 and 2014CB542503 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant No.31402196.Yi Shi is supported by the Excellent Young Scientist Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS 2015078.
2016-11-10（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）
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