Vaccine for Dengue

To any ex-G.I. who had sweated out a tropical assignment, there was a certain irony in the news: the Army had at last found a vaccine to combat dengue* fever, which had plagued 84,000 troops during the war years with rashes, headaches, fever and racking joint pains. Although nonfatal, the mosquito-borne disease lasted anywhere from two to 15 days; worst of all, there was no specific treatment.

In Washington, the Commission on Neurotropic Virus Diseases reported that Army doctors first isolated the virus in Hawaii, developed the new vaccine in the U.S. from an extract taken from the brains of mice infected with the virus. An immunizing dose is extremely small: extract from the brain of a single mouse supplies 10,000 doses.

*Pronounced deng-gay; from the Spanish denguero, affected or dandified--indicating the stiff or unnatural gait of the sufferer.

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