{"id":24262,"date":"2024-04-11T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T18:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/11\/the-push-for-a-better-dengue-vaccine-grows-more-urgent\/"},"modified":"2024-04-11T18:26:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T18:26:00","slug":"the-push-for-a-better-dengue-vaccine-grows-more-urgent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/11\/the-push-for-a-better-dengue-vaccine-grows-more-urgent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Push for a Better Dengue Vaccine Grows More Urgent"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/03\/multimedia\/xx-dengue-vaccine-01-ljvz\/xx-dengue-vaccine-01-ljvz-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"The Push for a Better Dengue Vaccine Grows More Urgent\" title=\"The Push for a Better Dengue Vaccine Grows More Urgent\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale \u2014 a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in Argentina, a state of emergency declared in Peru, and now another, in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It forewarns of a changing landscape for the disease. The mosquitoes that spread dengue thrive in densely populated cities with weak infrastructure, and in warmer and wetter environments \u2014 the type of habitat that is expanding quickly with climate change.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">More than 3.5 million cases of dengue have been confirmed by governments in Latin America in the first three months of 2024, compared with 4.5 million in all of 2023. There have been more than 1,000 deaths so far this year. The Pan-American Health Organization <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paho.org\/en\/news\/28-3-2024-paho-calls-collective-action-response-record-increase-dengue-cases-americas#:~:text=While%20dengue%20is%20on%20the,cases%20and%2087%25%20of%20deaths.\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">is warning that this may be the worst year for dengue ever recorded<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The rapidly shifting disease landscape needs new solutions, and researchers in Brazil delivered the lone shred of good news in this story with the recent announcement that a clinical trial of a new dengue vaccine, delivered in a single shot, had <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2301790?query=featured_home\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">provided strong protection against the disease<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There are two existing vaccines for dengue, but one is an expensive two-shot regimen, while the other can only be given to people who have already had a dengue infection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The new one-shot vaccine uses live, weakened forms of all four strains of the dengue virus, and it was created by scientists at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The vaccine was licensed for development by the Instituto Butantan, a huge public research institute in S\u00e3o Paulo, and Merck &amp; Co.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Butantan will make the vaccine. It already produces most of the immunizations used in Brazil, and has the capacity to make tens of millions of doses of this new one. The institute plans to submit the dengue vaccine to Brazil\u2019s regulatory agency for approval in the next few months and could begin producing it next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But that won\u2019t help with this outbreak, and by the time the production gears up and a national rollout gets started, it may not be enough to help with the next one, either; dengue typically surges in three- or four-year cycles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And it won\u2019t necessarily be of help to the rest of Latin America: Butantan will only make the vaccine for Brazil. Other countries in the region struggling with dengue will have to purchase it from Merck, which has not said what it plans to charge for the shot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And there is, of course, demand for a dengue vaccine beyond the Americas: mosquitoes are spreading the disease to Croatia, Italy, California and other regions that haven\u2019t seen it before. Places used to handling mild outbreaks now face record-breaking ones: Bangladesh had 300,000 cases last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dengue is commonly known by the name breakbone fever, after the excruciating joint pain it causes. Not everybody experiences that pain: Three-quarters of people infected with dengue don\u2019t have any symptoms at all, and among those who do, most cases resemble only a mild flu.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But about 5 percent of people who become sick will progress to what\u2019s called severe dengue. Plasma, the protein-rich fluid component of blood, can start to leak out of blood vessels, causing patients to go into shock or suffer organ failure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When patients with severe dengue are treated with blood transfusions and intravenous fluids, the mortality rate tends to be between 2 and 5 percent. But when they don\u2019t get treatment \u2014 because they don\u2019t realize it\u2019s dengue and don\u2019t seek treatment quickly enough, or because health centers are overwhelmed \u2014 the mortality rate is 15 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Brazil, the current dengue outbreak is hitting children hardest; those under 5 have the highest mortality rate of any age group, followed by those aged 5 to 9. Adolescents between 10 and 14 have the highest number of confirmed cases, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/agencia.fiocruz.br\/observa-infancia-dengue-atinge-com-maior-gravidade-criancas-ate-5-anos-em-2024\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">according to the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz<\/a>, a national public health research center.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As clinics began to be overwhelmed with dengue patients in January, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/02\/10\/health\/dengue-brazil-americas.html\" title=\"\">the Brazilian government bought the entire global stock of a Japanese-made vaccine<\/a> for dengue called Qdenga. Public health nurses are delivering it to children ages 6 to 16, but there will only be enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 3.3 million of Brazil\u2019s 220 million people this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This big national effort will protect a few million children, but it won\u2019t contribute anything to its herd immunity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Qdenga is not cheap: It\u2019s about $115 per dose in Europe and $40 in Indonesia. Brazil is paying $19 per dose, having negotiated a lower price for its huge purchase.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Takeda Pharmaceuticals, which makes Qdenga, announced a deal last month with Biological E, a large Indian generic drug maker, to license and produce up to 50 million doses a year, part of a race to accelerate production. The Indian vaccine should cost considerably less. But Biological E is unlikely to have regulatory approval to market it before 2030; it\u2019s a slow process that involves transferring technology, setting up a production line and getting a new version of even a well-known product approved by regulators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dengue costs Brazil <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ijidonline.com\/article\/S1201-9712(22)00383-6\/fulltext\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">at least $1 billion a year<\/a> in health care treatment and lost productivity. And that figure doesn\u2019t take into account the human suffering involved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There are four different strains of the dengue virus, which complicate more than the process of making a vaccine: The potentially fatal form of the disease is more common when a person has a second infection, with a different strain than they had the first time. Qdenga protects against all four strains of dengue, and the hope is that the new Butantan vaccine does too, although the data released so far show it tested only against the two types that were circulating during the first part of the trial; more results are expected in June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Millions more people will have been exposed to dengue when this outbreak finally passes. But they\u2019re going to need that new vaccine more urgently than ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/11\/health\/dengue-vaccine-brazil.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale \u2014 a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in Argentina, a state of emergency declared in Peru, and now another, in Puerto Rico. It forewarns of a changing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/03\/multimedia\/xx-dengue-vaccine-01-ljvz\/xx-dengue-vaccine-01-ljvz-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29473,7850,4759,11797,13157],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24264,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24262\/revisions\/24264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}