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“Due to the possibility of severe disease arising from vaccine-induced immunity, the ideal dengue vaccine is one Target Selective Inhibitor Library mouse that has high and equal efficacy against all four serotypes. However, this ideal may be difficult to attain. The results of a recent Phase IIb trial indicate that the vaccine candidate furthest along in development protects against serotypes 1, 3 and 4 but not serotype 2 [1]. Though several statements of vaccine requirements have said that vaccines must protect against all four serotypes, partially effective vaccines may reduce morbidity and mortality

[2] and [3]. Conversely, specific partially effective vaccines may result in increased clinical disease due to inducing

immunity that pre-disposes individuals to more severe disease [4]. The potential population-level impacts of a partially effective vaccine have not been explored [5]. The dengue viruses exist as four antigenically distinct serotypes. Infection with one strain is thought to induce a life-long protective immune response to other viruses of the same serotype (homotypic immunity) and a short-term cross-protective response against other serotypes (heterotypic immunity), but waning heterotypic immunity has been associated with more severe illness upon secondary infection [6] and [7]. After secondary infection individuals generate a strong serological response that is broadly cross-reactive and, despite some evidence of tertiary and quaternary infections, it is generally assumed that most individuals selleck can only undergo up to two infections [8]. While the target of dengue vaccine design has been to generate a balanced protective

serological response to all four serotypes, vaccines targeting other antigenically diverse pathogens have shown a substantial public health impact even when inducing immunity to a subset of types of pathogen. Examples include pneumococcal conjugate vaccines [9], Human Papillomavirus (HPV) [10] and [11] and Haemophilus influenza B vaccines [12] and [13]. While mafosfamide dengue is unique due to the association that exists between secondary exposure and more severe forms of the disease, it is not clear that this difference needs to fundamentally change our approach to controlling dengue compared to other pathogens. Evaluation of the potential impact of partially effective vaccines through simulation requires consideration of scenarios with heterogeneities between serotypes like those that are likely to exist in endemic/hyperendemic settings. Estimates of the force of infection derived from age-stratified seroprevalence studies conducted in Rayong, Thailand in 1980/1981 and 2010 suggest that the average transmission intensity (and R0) of DENV-2 is higher than that of other serotypes [14] and [15].