World dengue vaccine could be ready by 2015

One of the grimmest legacies of the war in the Pacific is still being fought 70 years on, but a victory over dengue – the intensely painful “breakbone fever” which the conflict helped spread around the world – may be in sight. Paris-based drug firm Sanofi hopes for positive results in September from a key trial among 4,000 children in Thailand that would set it on course to market a shot in 2015 that would prevent an estimated 100 million cases of dengue infection each year. Early tests of the trial have shown a balanced immune response against all four dengue types. “Everything they’ve done so far looks very good,” said Duane Gubler of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. He expects that Sanofi’s vaccine will show an efficacy rate of at least 75 – 80%. Orin Levine of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the new vaccine is a potential breakthrough, but...