Zika antiviral chemotherapy: identification of drugs and promising starting points for drug discovery from an FDA-approved library.

ABSTRACT: Background The recent epidemics of Zika virus (ZIKV) implicated it as the cause of serious and potentially lethal congenital conditions such microcephaly and other central nervous system defects, as well as the development of the Guillain-Barré syndrome in otherwise healthy patients. Recent findings showed that anti-Dengue antibodies are capable of amplifying ZIKV infection by a mechanism similar to antibody-dependent enhancement, increasing the severity of the disease. This scenario becomes potentially catastrophic when the global burden of Dengue and the advent of the newly approved anti-Dengue vaccines in the near future are taken into account. Thus, antiviral chemotherapy should be pursued as a priority strategy to control the spread of the virus and prevent the complications as

SUBMITTER: Pascoalino BS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5112578 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature