With dengue causing mosquitoes alarmingly taking into its grip over 129 countries, The Dengue Alliance, a coalition of reputed healthcare and research institutions from the endemic nations has set a goal to develop a new treatment using repurposed drugs and combinations within the next five years to curb the vector-borne menace.
The alliance, co-created, co-owned, and co-funded by dengue-endemic nations, aims to accelerate research and development to deliver dengue therapeutics through an inclusive partnership, as per the comment published in The Lancet Global Health journal by The Dengue Alliance.
Conceived by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), the Alliance comprises a string of institutions from dengue-endemic countries including the Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in Thailand; the Ministry of Health in Malaysia; the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in India; the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil; and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil among a few others.
Experts warn that climate change, rapid urbanization, and widespread international travel threaten to spread mosquito-borne viral infection in the world, with half of the world’s population already at risk of becoming infected.
The WHO has already flagged the concern. “About half of the world’s population is at risk of dengue, and dengue affects approximately 129 countries,” Dr Raman Velayudhan, WHO’s Head of the Global Programme on control of Neglected Tropical Diseases said recently.
“We estimate that about 100 to 400 million cases are reported every year. This is basically an estimate and the American region alone has reported about 2.8 million cases and 101,280 deaths,” he rings alarm bells.
Dengue mosquitoes which are charting new territories in Europe and North Americas is estimated to infect approximately 390 million individuals annually, with 96 million infections being symptomatic.
So far, the only strategy adopted to reduce the burden of dengue is vector control. Although techniques such as using Wolbachia bacteria to reduce dengue transmission by Aedes mosquitoes look promising, it is evident that vector control alone is unlikely to be adequate to reduce the dengue burden.
The currently available dengue vaccines (CYD-TDV and TAK-003) have been shown to reduce hospitalisations, especially in dengue-seropositive individuals, but lack efficacy against some dengue virus serotypes.
Also, CYD-TDV showed a higher incidence of severe dengue in dengue-naive vaccine recipients, and both vaccines show some degree of waning immunity with time, especially in seronegative individuals.
