Public organizations in Brazil reported that they managed to develop a completely national dengue vaccine with an average efficacy close to 79.8%. The immunizing agent was produced by researchers at the Butantan Institute of San Pablo.
As reported by the Télam agency , the announcement was made after the Ministry of Health reported on the start of vaccination against dengue for people between 10 and 14 years old with a vaccine imported from a Japanese laboratory.
Brazil is experiencing a dengue outbreak that has already caused 15 confirmed deaths so far in 2024 and another 147 under investigation, while the government of its capital, Brasilia, declared an emergency due to the disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito .
In this framework, the Butantan Institute of São Paulo, a public laboratory, announced that until June it will seek to register the dengue vaccine with the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, the regulatory entity). The data from the third phase of the clinical trial were also released this Thursday in the scientific publication The New England Journal of Medicine .
A statement from the state Research Support Foundation of the state of Sao Paulo (Fapesp, for its acronym in Portuguese) - the financier of the study - reported that the vaccine developed by the Butantan Institute "proved to be safe both among volunteers with a history of prior infection as well as among those who had never been infected before.
The results of the first two years of the phase 3 clinical trial, which began in February 2016 and included 16,235 participants from 13 states in Brazil, are now detailed by subgroups.
According to the study, the Butantan Institute vaccine had an efficacy of 80.1% for the age group of 2 to 6 years; 77.8% among participants aged 7 to 17; and 90% among those between 18 and 59 years old.
"The publication of this article in the world’s leading medical journal attests to the rigor and quality of the work carried out by researchers from 16 Brazilian centers, located in the five regions of the country," said the director of the Butantan Institute, infectious disease specialist Esper Kallás. first author of the study.
According to official figures, the incidence of dengue calculated in the largest country in Latin America currently stands at 107.1 cases per group of 100,000 inhabitants, while the fatality rate of the disease is 0.9%. the statement says.
