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CHICAGO, Feb. 8 – An earlier dengue infection, a mosquito-borne disease that infects nearly 400 million people a year, could halve the risk of contracting Zika, US and Brazilian researchers said yesterday.
The discovery, published in the journal Science, may have implications for the approved and experimental dengue vaccines of Sanofi, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Merck & Co and the Brazilian Butantan Institute, they said.
It was based on tests of blood samples from a long-standing study of nearly 1,500 women in Salvador, a city in northeastern Brazil that was severely affected by the epidemic. zika that started in 2015.
Dengue and zika are closely related diseases. Scientists have established a link between infection with the Zika virus during pregnancy and serious conbad anomalies, including microcephaly, characterized by a small head.
Overall, the study found that Zika reached 73% of the study participants and that the high rate of infection in this part of Brazil explains the high number of infants born later with microcephaly, said Albert Ko of Yale School of Public Health, a leading author of the study.
The women in this study who had previously been exposed to dengue were, however, less likely to contract zika.
"If you have high levels of anti-dengue antibodies, you can halve your chances of getting infected," said Dr. Ernesto Marques, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. and at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz of Brazil, during a telephone interview.
Marques developed a test that allowed researchers to distinguish between dengue and Zika infections. He added that new studies are needed to understand whether new dengue vaccines could also protect against Zika virus.
Takeda, last month, released the positive results of his dengue vaccine called TAK-003, showing that it prevented dengue fever caused by one of four types of dengue fever. The full results of Phase 3 are expected in the coming months.
If authorized, TAK-003 would be Sanofi's second vaccine against dengvaxia, which was first approved in 2015. The deployment of this vaccine is blocked because it can increase the risk of severe dengue fever in some people who had never been infected before.
In Brazil, the non-profit Butantan Institute is in the final stages with another dengue vaccine developed by the US National Institutes of Health for use in Brazil. Merck, which has authorized the use of this vaccine outside of Brazil, is in the early stages of clinical testing. – Reuters
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