Dengue research in the Philippines is changing over time

Communicable diseases, including dengue, continue to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the Philippines. Now the researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases reviewed 60 years of published dengue literature in the country to identify trends in previous studies and areas in which further research is needed.

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands with a population of about 101 million inhabitants. The country is lagging behind most Southeast Asian and Northern Asian countries in terms of health. Dengue fever was detected for the first time in the Philippines in the 1950s and remains of concern due to widespread endemicity, minimal success of vector control measures, the possibility of sequential infection by different serotypes and the risk of serious illness.

In the new work, Jacqueline Deen from the University of the Philippines in Manila used four databases: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Science Direct, and the Health and Development Research Information Network. They each searched for items dating from 1958 to 2017 including keywords related to dengue and the Philippines.

The team identified and reviewed 135 eligible dengue studies in the Philippines; 33% were descriptive epidemiological studies or case series, 16% were entomological or vector control studies, 12% were dengue virology studies, 10% were socio-behavioral and economic studies, 8% were clinical trials, 7% were on the disease burden, 7% were on disease severity markers, 5% on diagnoses and 2% on models. In recent years, the number of dengue publications has increased and the types of investigations have become more complex and diverse, the review noted. However, they also identified several knowledge gaps: long-term comparative badysis of epidemiological patterns by site and year, studies of new intervention measures as they became available, and more basic laboratory research.

"Studies such as this one can help raise public awareness of the importance of the disease and the need to improve treatment and prevention strategies," the researchers say.

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Quote: Agrupis KA, Ylade M, Aldaba J, AL Lopez, J Deen (2019). Trends in dengue research in the Philippines: a systematic review. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 13 (4): e0007280.https: //do I.org /ten.1371 /newspaper.PNTD.0007280

Funding: The authors did not receive any specific funding for this study.

Competing interests: The authors state that there is no conflict of interest.