Hantavirus: 40% fatality rate. Zero approved treatments.

The best modern medicine can offer is "supportive care," which means hope your body figures it out.

Why have we not been studying treatments?

Hantavirus is an RNA virus. Ivermectin blocks the nuclear import pathway that RNA viruses exploit to replicate. Peer-reviewed studies published in Antiviral Research, Nature, and the Journal of Virology show broad-spectrum antiviral activity against dengue, Zika, West Nile, chikungunya, and other RNA viruses.

Three people are dead on a quarantined cruise ship. Five more are sick. The WHO has confirmed it's the Andes strain, the only hantavirus known to spread person to person. US health authorities are now monitoring passengers in three states.

A Nobel Prize-winning drug with a decades-long safety profile and a documented antiviral mechanism exists. No one is claiming it's a proven cure. But when the fatality rate is 40% and there is literally no approved treatment, the question is simple: why isn't anyone studying it?

h/t Mary Talley Bowden MD