
Aaron King
Professor
University of Michigan
Dengue, a mosquito-borne virus of humans, infects over 50 million people annually. Infection with any of the four dengue serotypes induces protective immunity to that serotype, but does not confer long-term protection against infection by other serotypes. The immunological interactions between serotypes are of central importance in understanding epidemiological dynamics and anticipating the impact of dengue vaccines. We analysed a 38-year time series with 12 197 serotyped dengue infections from a hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. Using novel mechanistic models to represent different hypothesized immune interactions between serotypes, we found strong evidence that infection with dengue provides substantial short-term cross-protection against other serotypes (approx. 1-3 years). This is the first quantitative evidence that short-term cross-protection exists since human experimental infection studies performed in the 1950s. These findings will impact strategies for designing dengue vaccine studies, future multi-strain modelling efforts, and our understanding of evolutionary pressures in multi-strain disease systems.
Professor
University of Michigan
Professor & Preeminent Scholoar
University of Florida
Distinguished University Professor of Health Science and Policy
University of Pittsburgh
Associate Professor
Johns Hopkins University
Associate Professor
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professor
University of Georgia
MIDAS Coordination Center
University of Pittsburgh
A737 Public Health
130 DeSoto Street
Pittsburgh PA 15261