Anti-malaria drug chloroquine is highly effective in treating avian influenza A H5N1 virus infection in an animal model
Dear Editor,
The recent controversial studies of man-made avian flu viruses caused a media storm,and brought new concerns to the potential of an avian influenza H5N1 virus pandemic,which has been pending since 1997 [1,2].Although the estimated mortality rate of avian influenza A H5N1 virus infection in humans could be as high as 60％,the World Health Organization (WHO) phase of pandemic alert is currently set at 3,due to that there has not been human-to-human or community-level transmission (http://www.who.int/influenza/preparedness/pandemic/h5nlphase/en/index.html).However,the newly created H5N1 virus strains,which are genetically altered,are transmissible among ferrets,and thus may trigger a real pandemic that could potentially result in millions of deaths according to Science Insider [3].While it is arguably a bit too late to debate whether regulations or mandatory reviews should be applied to these dualuse studies,in the matter of fact,these viruses that are probably among the most dangerous infectious agents known already exist.Therefore,a top priority at present is to find effective prophylactic or therapeutic agents that would help to control a pandemic of avian influenza A H5N1 viruses.
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the Ministry of Science and Technology of China2009CB522105;the National Natural Science Foundation of China81230002;the 111 Project B08007.CJ is a Hsien Wu professor of Biochemistry
2013-04-08（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）
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300-302
