title: Viral hemorrhagic fevers: advancing the level of treatment.
abstract: The management of viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) has mainly focused on strict infection control measures, while standard clinical interventions that are provided to patients with other life-threatening conditions are rarely offered to patients with VHFs. Despite its complexity, a proper clinical case management of VHFs is neither futile nor is it lacking in scientific rationale. Given that patient outcomes improve when treatment is started as soon as possible, development and implementation of protocols to promptly identify and treat patients in the earliest phases of diseases are urgently needed. Different pharmacological options have been proposed to manage patients and, as for other life-threatening conditions, advanced life support has been proved effective to address multiorgan failure. In addition, high throughput screening of small molecular libraries has emerged as a novel promising way to find new candidates drugs for VHFs therapy and a relevant number of new molecules are currently under investigation. Here we discuss the current knowledge about VHF clinical management to propose a way to step up the approach to VHFs beyond the mere application of infection control measures.
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani, Rome, Italy. giuseppe.ippolito@inmi.it
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ippolito
authors.forename: Heinz
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Feldmann
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lanini
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vairo
authors.forename: Antonino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Di Caro
authors.forename: Maria Rosaria
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Capobianchi
authors.forename: Emanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nicastri
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D006482:Hemorrhagic Fevers, Viral / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000276:immunology / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D007155:Immunologic Factors / Q000627:therapeutic use; D016376:Oligonucleotides, Antisense / Q000627:therapeutic use; D014611:Vaccination
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D007155:Immunologic Factors; D016376:Oligonucleotides, Antisense