An Academia Sinica research team said on Thursday it had developed a protein drug that is effective in identifying and treating dengue fever.
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease that causes severe flu-like symptoms and can be fatal.
Research team leader Wu Han-Chung (吳漢忠) said the newly developed therapeutic antibody, humanized via genetic engineering, is effective in checking dengue virus type 2 and protecting animals from being infected by the virus.
The antibody can also be made into diagnostic reagent kits to allow health institutions to identify what type of dengue virus a patient has, said Wu, professor and vice director at the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology at the nation’s top research institution.
Dengue fever, with its potential to trigger dengue shock syndrome and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), is a critical public health issue in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, he said.
It is estimated that 50 million to 100 million dengue infections occur each year, with 500,000 cases of DHF and about 20,000 deaths, Wu said.
He said the newly developed antibody was capable of both neutralizing dengue viral infection and protecting mice against becoming infected.
The antibody showed a success rate of 90 percent in a recently completed animal study, but it will take a year before it can enter phase one clinical testing, Wu said.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control warned that the number of domestic dengue fever cases could exceed 1,000 by the end of this year and urged the public to get rid of standing water, especially around residential areas.
The Centers for Disease Control said the biggest epidemics of dengue fever were in 2002 with 5,000 domestic cases, followed by 2007 with 2,000 cases.
Last year saw 848 cases.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching