Nanotechnology against dengue

Dengue Fever Dengue infection is usually associated with tropical countries and causes high fever, headache, rash, severe joint and muscle pain, haemorrhage, and death. Dengue infection is caused by any one of four related viruses that are transmitted to humans by the mosquitoes. There is no vaccine against dengue; nor have any specific antiviral medications shown to be effective to treat it. An effective vaccine would need to induce the immune system to produce antibodies against all four dengue virus serotypes, a task that so far has proven too difficult to accomplish and development and testing of antiviral medications is complicated and expensive. For dengue prevention and treatment the only existing ways are to control the mosquito populations responsible for transmitting the disease and to avoid being bitten by infected mosquitoes. Researchers of James Cook University use nanotechnology to monitor a small protein that binds to antibodies, enabling it to be used to identify the po