Human pathogenic hantaviruses and prevention of infection

Abstract

Hantaviruses are emerging viruses which are hosted by small mammals. When transmitted to humans, they can cause two clinical syndromes, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome or hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome. The review compiles the current list of hantaviruses which are thought to be pathogenic in humans on the basis of molecular or at least serological evidence. Whereas induction of a neutralizing humoral immune response is considered to be protective against infection, the dual role of cellular immunity (protection versus immunopathogenicity) is discussed. For active immunisation, inactivated virus vaccines are licensed in certain Asian countries. Moreover, several classical and molecular vaccine approaches are in pre-clinical stages of development. The development of hantavirus vaccines is hampered by the lack of adequate animal models of hantavirus-associated disease. In addition to active immunization strategies, the review summarizes other ways of infection prevention, as passive immunization, chemoprophylaxis, and exposition prophylaxis.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the continuous support of their work by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (currently grants KR1293/9-1 and Graduiertenkolleg 1121). In addition, B.K. acknowledges financial support by the European Commission (European Virus Archive, FP7 CAPACITIES project—GA n° 228292) and the Slovak Scientific Grant Agency VEGA (grant 2/0189/09). We thank Brian Hjelle and Jiro Arikawa for critical comments.

Figures and Tables

Table 1 Hantaviruses reported to be pathogenic in humansa

Table 2 Summary of hantavirus vaccines used in humans and non-human primates