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posted by CoolHand on Friday March 18 2016, @10:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the we've-got-the-fever dept.

A single-dose dengue vaccine, tested in a small clinical trial, was 100 percent effective in protecting human volunteers from a strain of the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus in the world.

The vaccine, developed at the National Institutes of Health, was tested in a trial led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine .

It could represent a major advance in the battle against dengue, which infects nearly 400 million people across more than 120 countries each year. Most survive with few or no symptoms, but more than 2 million annually develop what can be a dangerous dengue hemorrhagic fever. That kills more than 25,000 people each year.

I've never had it, but have met enough survivors on my travels to know you'd never want to. Good news.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Studies that Intentionally Infect Humans with Pathogens are Increasing 20 comments

In 1976, at the behest of a U.S. government panel, Myron "Mike" Levine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore began intentionally giving humans V. cholerae. He is still doing so today.

Forty years ago Levine was one of a tiny cadre of researchers doing so-called human challenge studies—intentionally infecting people with V. cholerae and other pathogens to test drugs and vaccines. But in the past few decades, this practice, which has a long and checkered past, "has become much more mainstream," Levine says. Stricter safety procedures and new ways to weaken pathogens to reduce their risks are leading investigators in industry, universities, and government to take a new look at human challenge trials, which offer a powerful tool for studying diseases and potential therapies. There's even a commercial company, hVIVO in London, that specializes in human challenges. Today, people are being deliberately infected with malaria, influenza, shigella, dengue, norovirus, tuberculosis, rhinovirus, Escherichia coli, typhoid, giardia, and campylobacter.

[...] So there was considerable concern when NIAID's Matthew Memoli proposed new human challenge studies with influenza in 2011, which ultimately aimed to test novel treatments and vaccines. Some of his colleagues were so wary that the ethics department at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIAID's parent, was asked to conduct a formal review of the protocol. "We went through a lot of steps," Memoli says. The ethicists were particularly concerned about the proposed "high levels of payment"—up to $4000—but deemed this was not an "undue influence" because no one had an obligation to accept the offer.

I wonder how many people who proclaim that they "never get sick" would be willing to test their claim.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/studies-intentionally-infect-people-disease-causing-bugs-are-rise

The dengue vaccine trial mentioned in TFA was discussed here earlier this year:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/03/18/199234


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Gravis on Friday March 18 2016, @10:48PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Friday March 18 2016, @10:48PM (#320211)

    aww dengue that's a lot. (^_^;)

    • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:00PM (#320214)
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:18PM (#320221)

      groanworthy pun + smiley = urge to stab rising

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 18 2016, @11:27PM (#320224)

        Make an account and put him on your Foes list :^)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:11AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:11AM (#320233)

          Will you see your foes postings? Keep your enemies close sort of thing you know.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:36AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:36AM (#320237)

            You can actually give -6 to +6 bonus moderation to your foes or any other group defined on https://soylentnews.org/my/comments [soylentnews.org]

            • (Score: 2, Disagree) by captain normal on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:43AM

              by captain normal (2205) on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:43AM (#320257)

              I don't think that means what you seem to think or imply.

              --
              The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by stormwyrm on Saturday March 19 2016, @03:49AM

      by stormwyrm (717) on Saturday March 19 2016, @03:49AM (#320287) Journal
      I live in a part of the world where the disease is prevalent, and having gotten the disease myself, and knowing dozens of other people who have, including my own son, I can tell you it is terrible. Luckily, my son and I didn't develop haemorrhagic fever like a friend and an aunt of mine did, and they only survived thanks to friends and family who donated blood. They were laid up for more than a month as I recall, and I think it was my aunt who nearly died from dengue shock syndrome. As for me and everyone else I knew who got sick with it was hospitalised for at least a week or two, experiencing bone-crushing agony. Almost literally: dengue is not called break bone fever for nothing: one's bones actually do feel like they're being crushed. So what if the disease only kills 25,000 a year? Maybe you ought to experience it first hand yourself and then you can tell us whether you think it's not a big deal!
      --
      Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
  • (Score: 2) by xpda on Friday March 18 2016, @11:32PM

    by xpda (5991) on Friday March 18 2016, @11:32PM (#320227) Homepage

    When will the vaccine be available? What are the side effects?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Joe on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:52AM

      by Joe (2583) on Saturday March 19 2016, @12:52AM (#320240)

      It might take a while for the vaccine to be available. The abstract says that it is currently in phase 2, so I'd say at least a few years.

      The side effect mentioned in the paper:

      Vaccination was well tolerated, and fever was not observed. The only adverse event (AE) that occurred more frequently in TV003 recipients compared to placebo controls was a mild, asymptomatic rash in 79.2% of vaccine recipients (table S1). The rash consisted of a few maculopapular lesions on the proximal upper extremities and chest. It was unnoticed by the subjects and resolved in 5 to 10 days.

      - Joe

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:51AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:51AM (#320260)

        Yes, rash is one side effect but how many died of autism?!? Why won't they tell us the Truth?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:49AM (#320259)

    In figure one they left in text like "(give reasons here)", also according to table 3 no one in the placebo group had a fever. Did anyone even get Dengue Fever for this study?

    • (Score: 2) by Joe on Saturday March 19 2016, @03:03AM

      by Joe (2583) on Saturday March 19 2016, @03:03AM (#320281)

      The challenge virus was attenuated and derived from a strain that was weakly pathogenic in the wild. An IRB would not approve infecting healthy people with a dangerous virus unless there were antivirals available.

      From the paper:

      The challenge virus rDEN2Δ30 is derived from an American genotype DENV-2 that was isolated during an outbreak of dengue in the Kingdom of Tonga in 1974 (20). This outbreak was notable for causing mild disease and for a virus isolation rate that was considerably lower than that of other DENV-2 outbreaks (20). rDEN2Δ30 was originally developed as a DENV-2 candidate vaccine virus; however, it was not sufficiently attenuated in preclinical studies when compared with its parent virus

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @09:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @09:13AM (#320366)

        So the answer is "No". The vaccine was "100% effective" (but not really since many people had symptoms anyway), at interfering with a test for the presence of a different virus than the one causing a problem.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @10:00AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @10:00AM (#320376)

        Joe,

        The people who have decided to keep working with these biomed researchers spouting all kinds of incompetent BS need to stop them (ie take care of your own). Either be working on fixing that problem or get out before the reckoning. I have no idea what form this reckoning will take but I doubt it will be pleasant.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:01AM (#320262)

    It was pretty shitty but I was in a nice hotel in Bangkok with AC, water, comfy bed and my partner to get snacks. Others have it much worse - I heard of people (Westerners) who got it in remote villages and laid in bamboo hut for 2 weeks on their own. Not to mention locals who must deal with that all the time. I was told there are 3 types of dengue. If you get one then you are immune to that variant but God help you if you get one of the other forms. Apparerntly getting dengue twice is extremely dangerous (fatal). It doesn't make a lot of sense because, if true, people living in dengue areas would all be dead.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Joe on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:34AM

      by Joe (2583) on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:34AM (#320273)

      It doesn't make a lot of sense because, if true, people living in dengue areas would all be dead.

      More dangerous doesn't mean 100% fatal.

      The reason why getting infected with different strains of dengue fever virus is more dangerous is because of antibody-mediated enhancement. This means that the antibodies you produce to one strain not only doesn't protect you from the other, but they also increase the chances of severe disease with further infection. The mechanism is thought to be through Fc receptors on phagocytic cells that enhance uptake of the virus; however, the virus has a means of escaping the typical destructive process of engulfment and is able to successfully infect the cell instead.

      - Joe

      • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Saturday March 19 2016, @08:09AM

        by TheLink (332) on Saturday March 19 2016, @08:09AM (#320349) Journal

        I'm wondering what would happen if you gave the vaccine to someone who already has recovered from dengue before. Would the official/regulatory testing require testing on people who have recovered from different combinations of dengue? Or is it proven to not be a problem?

        Because as you say:

        because of antibody-mediated enhancement

        antibodies you produce to one strain not only doesn't protect you from the other

        So if you had dengue before there's a chance you might have problems fighting even the attenuated virus from the vaccine? The body just keeps using the wrong antibodies instead of making the right ones?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @09:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @09:02AM (#320363)

          The worst thing you can do for your health is think to hard about what "the authorities" tell you.

        • (Score: 2) by Joe on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:04PM

          by Joe (2583) on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:04PM (#320402)

          Yes, there would be an additional safety trial or efficacy trial using people who had prior infections with DENV.

          The CYD vaccine trial showed better protection in previously DENV-infected than in DENV-naive people, but that vaccine was built from a yellow fever virus backbone and is very different from TV003. TV003 is basically serotypes 1, 3 and 4 of regular DENV, with a deletion in a regulatory region of the genome, and a chimeric strain of 2 that has the surface proteins of 4 and the same deletion in the regulatory region.

          It is difficult to predict how the vaccine will act in non-naive people. There could be more protection, as in the CYD trial, or there could be less protection, as there is for the inhaled live-attenuated influenza vaccine. Since the virus is attenuated, i'd be more worried about lower protection efficacy due to biasing the dominant CD8 epitopes toward less conserved regions of the virus than causing disease by itself.

          - Joe

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19 2016, @02:32AM (#320272)

    Dengue Fever is sometimes referred to as the Bone Crushing Disease.

  • (Score: 2) by devlux on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:27PM

    by devlux (6151) on Saturday March 19 2016, @01:27PM (#320407)

    I'm worried about anything that claims to be 100% effective.
    I have a rock which is 100% effective at preventing tiger attacks, but for it to work you need to be in an area with no tigers.

    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday March 19 2016, @05:07PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Saturday March 19 2016, @05:07PM (#320485) Homepage Journal

      The small, initial clinical trial was 100% effective. Of the people who received the vaccine, none contracted dengue fever.

      Vaccines can approach 100% effectiveness. For comparison, for the Polio vaccine at least 99% are immune after three doses.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2016, @01:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2016, @01:12AM (#320613)

        But if almost no one gets it anyways out of a group of 100 people that receive no vaccine chances are none of them will get the virus either. Does that mean not vaccinating is effective too?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2016, @01:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2016, @01:23AM (#320616)

      I have a tin foil hat that's 100% effective at protecting against alien abductions. Everyone that buys it doesn't get abducted by aliens, money back guarantee.