Malaria drug can kill two lethal viruses

NEW YORK, March 5 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists say they've discovered two lethal viruses that cause encephalitis and respiratory disease are susceptible to chloroquine treatment.

Researchers at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York said chloroquine, a drug used to prevent and treat malaria, kills the Hendra virus and the Nipah virus -- both harbored by fruit bats. The viruses that emerged during the 1990s in Australia and Southeast Asia can produce a 75 percent fatality rate in humans.

"The fact that chloroquine is safe and widely used in humans means that it may bypass the usual barriers associated with drug development and move quickly into clinical trials," said Professor Anne Moscona, the study's senior author. "Chloroquine stands a good chance of making it through the development process in time to prevent further outbreaks of these deadly infections."

Hendra and Nipah are zoonotic pathogens. That means they originate in certain animals, but can jump between animal species and between animals and humans. There are currently no vaccines or treatments against the two henipaviruses, which are listed by the U.S. government as possible bioterrorism agents, the researchers said.

The study appears online in the Journal of Virology in advance of the journal's April print issue.