SynthesisPLoS neglected tropical diseases2022
Ribavirin for treating Lassa fever: A systematic review of pre-clinical studies and implications for human dosing.
Synthesis in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of ultrasound to predict severe disease in patients with dengue and other viral infections associated with hemorrhagic fevers.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Pooled it
- Therapeutics for Nipah virus disease: a systematic review to support prioritisation of drug candidates for clinical trials.The Lancet. Microbe · 2025Pooled it
- Favipiravir for Lassa fever: an open-label, randomized controlled phase 2 trial.Nature medicine · 2026Trial
- Adaptive Design for Phase II/III Platform Trial of Lassa Fever Therapeutics.Emerging infectious diseases · 2025Trial
- Evaluation of candidate reference materials for the harmonization of Lassa fever serology.Emerging microbes & infections · 2026Article
- Lassa virus live tracking and lineage assignment: how nextstrain can enhance surveillance and public health in Africa and beyond.Emerging microbes & infections · 2026Article
- In silico prioritization and cheminformatics identify structurally diverse small-molecule inhibitors of Lassa virus glycoprotein-mediated membrane fusion.SLAS discovery : advancing life sciences R & D · 2026Article
- Medicinal Chemistry Perspectives on Drug Repurposing: Innovative Approaches and Therapeutic Breakthrough.Therapeutic innovation & regulatory science · 2026Review
- Lassa fever countermeasures gather pace.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Lessons in the Wake of a Lassa fever case in the Midwest U.S: epidemiology, management and preparedness gaps.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Review
- Computer-Aided Discovery of Small-Molecule Inhibitors of Pathogenic New World Arenavirus Entry and Replication.ACS infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Griffithsin-mediated inhibition of cellular entry of hemorrhagic fever viruses and insights into its mechanisms.Journal of virology · 2026Article
- Sequence to structure insights into Lassa virus population-level biophysical properties and glycoprotein structure catalogue.Npj viruses · 2026Article
- Local heterogeneity in Lassa fever serology in rural Nigeria: Implications for vaccine trial site selection.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Hemorrhagic Fever Disease in STAT-1 Knockout Mice Infected with Lujo Virus.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Achievements and Challenges in Therapy and Vaccines Development of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers: An Up-to-Date Review.Pharmaceutics · 2026Review
- Design of a global population-covering multi-epitope mRNA vaccine against Lassa virus using immunoinformatics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Site-1 protease mediated GPC processing is required for persistence of LCMV Clone 13.Npj viruses · 2026Article
- Article
- Trends, Gaps, and Challenges in Antiviral Resistance: A Bibliometric Analysis and Narrative Synthesis of Key Viruses, Resistance Mechanisms, and Drivers.BioMed research international · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ribavirin is currently the standard of care for treating Lassa fever. However, the human clinical trial data supporting its use suffer from several serious flaws that render the results and conclusions unreliable. We performed a systematic review of available pre-clinical data and human pharmacokinetic data on ribavirin in Lassa. In in-vitro studies, the EC50 of ribavirin ranged from 0.6 μg/ml to 21.72 μg/ml and the EC90 ranged from 1.5 μg/ml to 29 μg/ml. The mean EC50 was 7 μg/ml and the mean EC90 was 15 μg/ml. Human PK data in patients with Lassa fever was sparse and did not allow for estimation of concentration profiles or pharmacokinetic parameters. Pharmacokinetic modelling based on healthy human data suggests that the concentration profiles of current ribavirin regimes only exceed the mean EC50 for less than 20% of the time and the mean EC90 for less than 10% of the time, raising the possibility that the current ribavirin regimens in clinical use are unlikely to reliably achieve serum concentrations required to inhibit Lassa virus replication. The results of this review highlight serious issues with the evidence, which, by today standards, would be unlikely to support the transition of ribavirin from pre-clinical studies to human clinical trials. Additional pre-clinical studies are needed before embarking on expensive and challenging clinical trials of ribavirin in Lassa fever.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.