Why Are Simultaneous Dengue Outbreaks Occurring Worldwide?

Written by Maryam Henein on April 1, 2024. Posted in Current News

Dengue has four distinct ‘serotypes’ (DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4), and protection from any two of them is needed to reduce the chance of serious disease.

A paper in Nature suggests that after a dengue infection, the immune system is hyped up enough to protect against a second infection with any serotype for one to two years. So why is a vaccine even necessary?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which invested $55 million in the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to support the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative (PDVI), invested millions into Takeda.

Turns out, the now-deceased Tadataka Yamada, a pioneer in drug and vaccine development, helped forge numerous biotech companies and spent five years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as head of global health. Yamada left Gates to become chief medical and scientific officer and executive vice president of Tokyo-based Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Now, Bill Gates is funding Takeda.

Do you understand what is going on here? Bill Gates and his multi-national foundation are involved in all steps of this Hegalian equation. And what’s worse, the dengue crisis got worse, not better, once these gene-edited mosquitos were deployed. What happens when you mix a vaccine into the equation? Yay, we’re about to find out!

WHO experts recommended the use of Takeda’s dengue vaccine QDENGA® (Dengue Tetravalent Vaccine [Live, Attenuated]) (TAK-003) on Oct 9, 2023, and it was cleared for lab rats, aka children aged 6 to 16 years of age. Get those sixes in, boys.

The vaccine is particularly significant because it is the first for people who have not previously contracted dengue. The virus infects up to 400 million people a year. QDENGA is currently available for children and adults in the private market in countries in Europe, Indonesia, and Brazil and will soon be available in Argentina and Thailand.

Qdenga is a two-dose live attenuated vaccine that uses DENV-2 as a backbone. Genes for key proteins from the other three serotypes are engineered into this backbone. A Takeda spokesperson says that clinical trial data have been collected from more than 28,000 people over 4.5 years, which is in line with World Health Organization recommendations.

The data show that Qdenga is safe, regardless of past dengue exposure, the spokesperson says. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) says there is no clear evidence of a higher risk of severe disease in people who have not been infected previously.

In August, the Indonesian drug regulator approved the vaccine for use without testing for previous exposure. Europe’s drug regulators are also considering approving the use of the vaccine without testing.

That’s right — without.

Researchers are also concerned because, according to the trial data, vaccinated individuals who had never had dengue before their jab but were infected with DENV-3 two years afterward were more likely to end up in the hospital than were people who had not been vaccinated.

The possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement ADE in which vaccination induces antibodies that make a subsequent infection worse, is fuelling concerns. ADE, also called “pathogenic priming,” cannot be ruled out based on clinical trial data gathered so far.

Leah Katzelnick, an epidemiologist at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, says a vaccine that does not protect against all four serotypes in people who have never been infected could induce a similar phenomenon.

The data only provide evidence for the vaccine conferring lasting protection against one serotype, says Aravinda de Silva, a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has collaborated with Takeda and other dengue-vaccine developers, which means it’s possible that a breakthrough infection with serotypes 1, 3, or 4 could cause ADE. 

“I was really disappointed and surprised that the Indonesian government approved the vaccine without restrictions,” says de Silva.”These observations are warning signs.”

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