There’s a piece of exciting news amidst reports of increasing dengue cases. The new vaccine is called Qdenga; Takeda Pharmaceuticals Ltd makes it.
The new vaccine shows promise, confirmed experts but with caveats. The first trial for the vaccine was conducted in the Philippines, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
Experts could confirm from the first trial that the vaccine enabled immunity for four years.
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The second trial included participants from Latin America and Asia. More than 2,000 participants were part of the second trial.
The findings of the study include the following:
Immunization reduced the requirement for hospitalization by 84%
Dengue could be prevented by about 61%
There were no safety problems reported
“As a pharmaceutical company, they [Takeda] have found that their vaccine works well in some cases. But there are concerns too. For example, in the Philippines, children who received the dengue vaccine [Sanofi’s Dengvaxia] developed a more severe condition afterward.[So], we cannot use it until independent bodies like GAVI, the World Health Organization, or Unicef recommend it. Says Prof MA Faiz, former director general, Health Services at DGHS.
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This is a common worry among experts. Many experts are apprehensive about the effectiveness of the new vaccine against four different strains of the dengue virus.
Currently, the vaccine has approval from US FDA. Presently, the vaccine can only be given to kids and teenagers between 9 to 16 having a lab-confirmed previous dengue-virus infection. Also, they need to be from an area where dengue is an endemic disease.
Dengue and the U.S
Dengue is expected in the continental United States. There have been previous outbreaks that were comparatively small and mostly restricted to some places.