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Butantan’s dengue vaccine has 79.6% efficacy, partial results from 2-year follow-up
- Singapore
The dengue vaccine under development by the Butantan Institute (i.e. Butantan-DV) shows 79.6% overall efficacy to prevent the disease, according to initial results from the phase 3 clinical study. There were no cases of severe dengue fever or with alarm signs during the two-year follow-up of the volunteers.
The results refer to analyses conducted between February 2016 and July 2021, by 16 research centers in different regions of Brazil, including 16,235 volunteers aged 2 to 59 years, who received a single dose of the vaccine. The incidence of laboratory-confirmed symptomatic dengue cases was observed after 28 days of vaccination until the second year of follow-up of individuals. The study will continue until all participants complete five years of follow-up in 2024.
People with and without previous exposure to dengue virus were included in the research. In participants who had already been infected before the study, the efficacy was 89.2%. In those who had never contracted the disease, protection was 73.5%.
The vaccine is tetravalent (capable of protecting against the four serotypes of the virus) and the study evaluated the efficacy against the serotypes DENV-1 and DENV-2, which was 89.5% and 69.6%, respectively.