Breakthough Dengue Vaccine

An experimental vaccine is being developed by a French drug company Sanofi Pasteur which is proving quite effective against dengue. CEO of Sanofi Pasteur, Olivier Charmeil said that for the first time ever after 20 years of research and industrial commitment dengue is set to become a vaccine preventable disease.

In the second clinical trial involving 20,875 children in the ages between 9 to 16 the risk of contracting dengue reduced by 60.8%. The children were from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The first trial which had been held in Southeast Asia on about 10,000 children and had been 56.5% effective.

The vaccine unfortunately is not very effective in younger children who are more prone to the disease. However it is able to prevent the disease in a majority of test subjects and can always be improved in efficiency. This is one science project that will prove useful in the eradication of a major disease worldwide.