In this manuscript, we report that like the NS5 proteins of ZIKV and dengue virus (DENV), YFV NS5 protein is able to bind hSTAT2 but not murine STAT2 (mSTAT2).
Compounds 3-8 exhibited strong inhibitory activities on both dengue and zika NS5 in primary assays, but extensive biological analyses indicated that only actephilol B (3) displayed a specific interaction with the NS5 targets.
Using 153 patient specimens with known ZIKV and/or dengue virus (DENV; a closely related flavivirus) infections, we showed that (i) ZIKV envelope-based MIA is equivalent or more sensitive than IgM-capture ELISA in diagnosing ZIKV infection, (ii) antibody responses to NS1 and NS5 proteins are more ZIKV-specific than antibody response to envelope protein, (iii) inclusion of NS1 and NS5 in the MIA improves the diagnostic accuracy when compared with the MIA that uses envelope protein alone.