Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024 COVID-19 Respiratory Treatment Effective in NIAID Encephalitis Study The top images, taken with a digital scanner, show La Crosse virus isolated from brain tissue of untreated mice growing in large plaques. The bottom images show restricted growth of virus isolated from mice treated with molnupiravir. (NIAID) NIAID research into finding broad uses for existing drugs may have a new success story: Molnupiravir, a new antiviral developed to treat respiratory diseases – such as COVID-19 – reduced brain swelling in study mice infected with a pathogen dangerous to children, La Crosse virus (LACV). The new study, from NIAID scientists and colleagues at the University of North Carolina and Emory University, is published in PLOS Pathogens. Oral treatment with molnupiravir reduced brain disease in mice by 32% when LACV infection was started by an injection in the abdomen, and by 23% when the infection was started in the nose. LACV, spread by mosquitos, was first isolated in the early 1960s in Wisconsin. Since then, LACV encephalitis cases have been found in more than 20 states, mostly in the basins of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and throughout the Appalachian Mountains. Most LACV infections in people are mild, but the virus sometimes – particularly in children – enters the brain, infects neurons and causes disease that can result in learning and memory difficulties, paralysis, seizures and death. Learn More National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases  |  National Institutes of Health

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