Another Dengue Vaccine Seeks Approval

Since dengue outbreaks cause about 400 million infections yearly, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and other agencies continue issuing health alerts for this deadly disease.

In the Americas, the total number of dengue cases reported was 2,997,097 through July 2023. Additionally, 1,302 deaths were reported in the Region.

To limit these deaths, two dengue vaccines have been approved and deployed in 2023.

According to a new study published in the journal Vaccines on August 22, 2023, the effectiveness of these vaccines varies.

Dengvaxia® has shown an efficacy of 60.8 % (95 % CI, 52.0–68.0) against symptomatic, virologically confirmed dengue (VCD) caused by any of dengue's four serotypes more than 28 days after the third dose in Asia (2 to 14-year children), and Latin America (9 to 16-year children) [15], respectively.

While QDENGA® has shown around 80.2 % (95 % CI, 73.3–85.3) efficacy.

And during a phase 1 clinical trial, the efficacy against VCD at 28 days after a single dose of a U.S. NIH-developed vaccine candidate was 79.6 %.

This study assessed the safety and immune response regarding nAbs induced by the SII Dengue vaccine in healthy adults in Australia.

The study showed the vaccine was safe and highly immunogenic in adults, primarily seronegative at baseline.

In the vaccine group, 59.0 % of participants showed DENV vaccine viremia post-vaccination.

This vaccine (Dengusiil) was formulated at Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. (SII) to contain DENV 1, DENV 3, and DENV 4 serotypes at not less than 2.5 log10 PFUs and DENV 2 at not less than 3 log10 PFUs per single dose of 0.5 mL.

SII executive director Rajeev Dhere recently informed the TOI, "The Phase-I trial was conducted in Australia as we needed participants who had not been exposed to dengue previously."

"India has a significant proportion of people with dengue antibodies, so it was essential to test the vaccine's safety and effectiveness on individuals who were not already immune to the disease."

As of August 27, 2023, Dengvaxia is approved in the U.S., but availability requires pre-admission testing.

During 2023, the state of Florida and Puerto Rico have reported locally acquired and travel-related dengue cases.