Hantavirus has no cure. Here’s where researchers are at with treatments and vaccines

A hantavirus outbreak aboard a luxury cruise ship this month has put the spotlight on a deadly disease that has no cure.

Hantavirus cases are rare and typically not contagious between humans. When people do catch it, it is usually after touching objects, eating food or inhaling particles contaminated with rodent droppings or urine. People can get it if they are bitten by an infected rodent, but that is also uncommon.

Infections can be deadly, and there is no dedicated treatment for hantavirus. Researchers around the world are working on a hantavirus vaccine, though they say development is in the early stages and rollout could be years away.

Some hantaviruses commonly found in Europe and Asia can lead to hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which mainly affects the kidneys and can cause bleeding-related complications. It has a death rate ranging from one to 12 per cent, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In North and South America, some hantaviruses can lead to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which mainly affects the lungs and causes death in about 40 per cent of cases, the agency said.

There have been 168 hantavirus cases in Canada since surveillance began in 1994, confirmed by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

How is hantavirus treated?

There aren’t treatments or cures available for hantavirus infections, according to Bryce Warner, a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.

“The standard of care right now if you’re a known positive is really getting medical attention as quick as possible,” he said.

Treatment aims to combat the patient’s symptomswhich can include fever, muscle pain, nausea and difficulty breathing in cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Doctors can help through fluid replacement, oxygen therapy and ventilation, Warner said.

Is there a vaccine?

There isn’t currently a vaccine for hantavirus, but researchers across the world are working to develop one.

Hantavirus vaccine development has been neglected for decades because there hasn’t been commercial interest in the research, according to Asel Sartbaeva, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Bath.

“The big problem was that most of the people who get these diseases are the people who can’t pay for them,” she said.

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Sartbaeva co-founded EnsiliTech, a biotechnology company that is part of an international team that started working on a vaccine to the Hantaan virus strain of hantavirus two years ago.

The team has developed an effective antigen, one dose of which creates good immunity and no side effects in rodents, Sartbaeva said. Next, her team will test a booster regime on rodents and send the vaccine to clinical trials.

“If we can get out something in three to four years, I will be very happy,” she said.

When a vaccine does roll out, Sartbaeva said she expects it to be used for people who live in places where hantaviruses are more common, and a travel shot for people heading to those destinations.

American pharmaceutical company Moderna Inc. has also worked on hantavirus vaccines alongside the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Korea University.

“These efforts are early-stage and ongoing,” Moderna spokesperson Kelly Cunningham said in an email.

The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization has been developing vaccines against two strains found in the Americas: Andes virus, found in South America, and Sin Nombre virus, the hantavirus strain linked to cases in Canada and the U.S., Warner said. The team will start animal tests this summer, but it could be years before rollout.

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Kristen Musson was diagnosed with hantavirus in 2023 and spent four days on life support in a medically induced coma. Musson has faith this will not become the ‘next pandemic,’ telling CBC’s Aarti Pole that she ‘doesn’t want anyone to go through what I went through.’

Without a public health emergency bigger than the current hantavirus outbreak, it’s unlikely there would be a big enough push for a vaccine that would speed up the process, Warner said.

“It is a lengthy and long and expensive process, and you need backing and money and political will and a lot of factors just to get something across the line.”