Vaccines to Prevent Chikungunya Could Already Created

Jakarta, Chikungunya fever, bone or make sufferers have a fever and pain until the bone was like that even severe arthritis can become paralyzed.

Chikungunya virus caused named Alphavirus and transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. This virus can not be eradicated and there is no cure. But now scientists are able to create a vaccine that can prevent Chikungunya.

"Today I have found no treatment or vaccine is approved for chikungunya, but there is a real need of an effective vaccine to protect these infections. So far we see this vaccine could meet that need," said Scott Weaver, director of UTMB's Institute for Human Infections and Immunity in the Galveston National Laboratory, published online in the journal PLoS Pathogens and the ScienceDaily quoted as saying on Monday (8/15/2011).

Symptoms of Chikungunya include high fever accompanied by chills up the sense of pain stabbing through the muscle and bone so that bone is also called the flu.

Although the symptoms are severe, the virus that causes the disease is not eradicated so that the medication is given only to cope with symptoms such as fever were given to overcome the fever. Fortunately, these symptoms only last between 5-10 days and will heal by itself.

The disease is still an epidemic in India, Southeast Asia and Africa. Currently, the researchers combined the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Inviragen Inc.. in FColorado, University of Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Alabama has developed a new candidate vaccine to protect humans from the threat of this virus.

This experimental vaccine in the form of a recombinant live attenuated vaccine, the vaccine created by genetic modification of Chikungunya virus. Manufacturing uses techniques developed with support from the Western Regional Center of Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is headquartered at UTMB.

The resulting vaccine strain differs from wild type Chikungunya virus in two ways which do not cause disease and are not able to infect mosquitoes.

The nature of the latter is very important as a safety feature to ensure that vaccine strains can not initiate the transmission in the health area. The goal is that tourists can be immunized before traveling to Africa or Asia but can generate an immune response against Chikungunya infection in the future.

Like the live virus, the vaccine is also relatively economical to produce in large quantities. This factor is important given the limited resources in the area afflicted by outbreaks of chikungunya.

"We need to slow the virus in India and Southeast Asia, not only to protect the people there, but also to reduce the risk of possible disease outbreak in here after the tourists go home infects. The best way to do this is with a vaccine," says Weaver .

UTMB has signed a licensing agreement with Inviragen for the commercialization of new vaccine candidates. In addition, both partners have been selected to receive grants from the National Institutes of Health United States amounted to U.S. $ 3 million over four years to complete this project.