Pharmacotherapy of Ebola hemorrhagic fever: a brief review of current status and future perspectives.

The 2014 outbreak clearly showed that Ebola viruses (EBOV) remain a substantial threat for public health. The mainstay of management of patients with Ebola disease is isolation of patients and use of strict barrier nursing procedures; the present treatment strategies are mainly symptomatic and supportive (fluid resuscitation, antypyretics, antidiarrheal drugs). Currently, there is no approved therapy for Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), however several advanced treatment options were tested in animal models (on non-human primates or rodents). They include use of both symptomatic (e.g. use of tissue factor inhibitors - rhNAPc2, rhAPC - to abolish coagulopathy) and specific antiviral approaches: e.g. monoclonal anti EBOV antibodies (ZMapp, MB-003), phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers (PMOs), liposomes containing siRNA (LNP-siRNA:TKM-Ebola) and small molecule inhibitors (e.g. BCX4430, favipiravir). The scope of this article is to briefly review the most promising therapeutics for EHF, based on the data coming from rare clinical reports, studies on animals and results from in vitro models.