Statins May Decrease the Fatality Rate of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Infection

The recent paper by Totura and colleagues (1) revealed thatToll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) signaling contributes to a protec-tive innate immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) infection. Despite the importance of SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) as public health threats, there are currently no drugs avail-able to treat these coronaviruses, with current evidence suggesting that the antiviral drugs ribavirin and interferon (IFN) are only slightly efficacious in ameliorating SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV in-fections (2). Now human-to-human infections of MERS-CoV are more frequently reported, with a total case fatality rate of 37.7% (2). Therefore, a feasible but effective treatment is needed ur-gently, especially treatment with FDA-approved drugs, including some over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. Like avian influenza viruses (AIVs), MERS-CoVs set off a cy-tokine storm (3), which is likely to lead to the subsequent acut