Dengue Future Challenges!!

According to the World Health Organization, dengue disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries around the world, and recent estimates say some 3 billion people—almost half of the world’s population—are at risk. It infects 50-100 million people every year. What lies ahead is further challenges.

Its a very common scientific way to inject vaccine (weak virus ) in human bodies for production of antibodies. This way helps the body fight actual disease in much better way.

Recently scientists have found that dengue has defeated this method. Getting infected by dengue once can put people at greater risk for a more severe infection down the road.

It was already known that upon a person’s first infection with dengue virus, the immune system reacts normally by creating antibodies to fight the viral invaders.

The problem is that those antibodies can then be confused if confronted later with one of the other three types of dengue virus, and as this new study revealed, even different subtypes within the same serotype.

“With the second infection, the antibodies sort of recognize the new type of viruses, but not well enough to clear them from the system,” says study lead author Molly OhAinle, post-doctoral fellow in infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Instead of neutralizing the viruses, the antibodies bind to them in a way that actually helps them invade the immune system’s other cells and spread.”

Read the original study here