Pathogenesis of arenavirus hemorrhagic fevers

Abstract

Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) caused by arenaviruses belong to the most devastating emerging human diseases and represent serious public health problems. Arenavirus VHFs in humans are acute diseases characterized by fever and, in severe cases, different degrees of hemorrhages associated with a shock syndrome in the terminal stage. Over the past years, much has been learned about the pathogenesis of arenaviruses at the cellular level, in particular their ability to subvert the host cell’s innate antiviral defenses. Clinical studies and novel animal models have provided important new information about the interaction of hemorrhagic arenaviruses with the host’s adaptive immune system, in particular virus-induced immunosuppression, and have provided the first hints towards an understanding of the terminal hemorrhagic shock syndrome. The scope of this article is to review our current knowledge on arenavirus VHF pathogenesis with an emphasis on recent developments.

Keywords::

• arenavirus
• hemorrhagic fever
• hemorrhagic shock syndrome
• immunosuppression
• Junin virus
• Lassa virus
• vascular endothelium
• vascular endothelium
• viral pathogenesis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Amalio Telenti (University of Lausanne) and Michael BA Oldstone (Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla) for their generous support.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant No. 3100A0-120250/1 (Stefan Kunz), the Prix Leenaards 2009 pour la promotion de la recherche scientifique (Stefan Kunz) and a research grant of the Foundation Vontobel (Marie-Laurence Moraz and Stefan Kunz). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.