A vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71) is undergoing clinical testing and might go to market next year, pediatricians said yesterday in Taipei at the release of a book about Taiwan’s fight against the disease since the 1998 epidemic that killed 78 children.
Prior to 1998, Taiwan had only had occasional enterovirus cases, but a fatal case in an eight-year-old girl that year led to a nationwide epidemic, Huang Li-min (黃立民), chairman of National Taiwan University Hospital’s pediatrics department and one of the book’s executive editors, said at the event at the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Outbreaks of the disease occur every few years, usually during the summer, and the virus is tenacious as it can survive gastric acid to reach the intestines, where it can enter the bloodstream, or sometimes cause limb paralysis, he said, adding that younger children are more susceptible to it.
While experts have come to realize how the 1998 epidemic occurred and how virus infection led to certain symptoms, more research is needed on how to prevent the disease and improved treatment, he said.
Taiwan has been trying to develop a vaccine for EV-71 since 2000, but progress has been slow due to clinical testing difficulties and a stricter legal framework, said former minister of health and welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延), now chair of the National Health Research Institutes board of directors.
Taiwan can be ranked top in the world in enterovirus studies, but China has been catching up, having launched EV-71 vaccines and published more research papers, he said.
Vaccine development in Taiwan was initiated by the Centers for Disease Control and the institutes, and a vaccine is now undergoing clinical testing by pharmaceutical firms and could be launched next year, Huang said.
Given the disease’s prevalence in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan is sharing its data with those nations and helping train their scientists, he said.
Given the prevalence of studies on EV71, more research needs to be done on enterovirus 68 to find out why it tends to affect patients’ nervous systems and why early diagnosis is difficult, Huang said.
Despite Taiwan’s internationally acclaimed achievements in tackling the disease, the mutability of enterovirus species and the loss of research talent remain big challenges in studying the disease, said Shih Shin-ru (施信如), director of Chang Gung University’s Research Center for Emerging Viral Infections.
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