Development of Dengue Fever Vaccine

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health in the United States have announced that they have developed a vaccine to prevent dengue fever. According to these scientists, in a small group on whom this vaccine was tested, no one contracted the disease after exposure to the virus. The National Institutes of Health hopes that this vaccine will be available to the public by 2018. Dengue fever is a viral disease transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, which is also the carrier of the Zika virus. The Zika virus has recently become an epidemic in South American and Caribbean countries. Pregnant women infected with the Zika virus give birth to babies with microcephaly, which means these infants have significantly smaller heads than normal and their brain development is severely delayed. According to Reuters, the development of this new vaccine has encouraged scientists to create a vaccine that can also prevent the spread of Zika. This vaccine, named TV003, was tested on a group of 21 individuals. These individuals were exposed to the dengue virus-2 (one of the four strains of this viral disease) six months after receiving the vaccine, but none of them became ill. Scientists hope that this vaccine will be effective in areas where dengue fever has become epidemic. Dengue fever is often prevalent in tropical regions, infecting nearly 400 million people in 120 countries each year. Although most patients recover from this disease, some develop a more severe form of dengue that claims the lives of 25,000 people worldwide annually. Dr. Stephen Whitehead from the National Institutes of Health states that controlling dengue fever has been a public health priority in recent years, but finding a way to prevent its spread has not been easy. The new vaccine is made from a combination of four live but weakened strains of the dengue virus, which is effective in preventing all four types of this fever. Another type of dengue vaccine is currently used in some countries, but it is not recommended for children and individuals over 45 years old, as well as non-natives. The effectiveness of this vaccine is also debated. There is a dengue vaccine that is only used in some countries, but its use is limited to specific age groups and is prevalent in areas with high disease incidence. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health hope that the next two trials of this vaccine, which are set to take place in Bangladesh and Brazil, will also yield positive results to allow for mass production and distribution of this vaccine.