Dengue fever may provide immunity against Covid-19 : Study

Increasing the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, several organizations and institutions across the globe are conducting research to develop a vaccine or to find out a disease that might fight against Covid-19.

Since the last eight months, over 47,000 scientific papers have emerged in medical journals that talk about ways of dealing with the disease. The information obtained from these papers has helped in predicting the result of Covid-19 and developing effective measures to control it.

The study which was exclusively shared with Reuters found a link between the spread of Covid-19 and past outbreaks of mosquito-borne viral disease dengue, which further suggested that exposure to dengue might be able to provide immunity against the virus to some amount.

The study, which has not been published yet, was led by Miguel Nicolelis who is a professor at Duke University. It compared the geographic distribution of Covid-19 cases with the spread of dengue in 2019 and 2020.

The study was being published ahead of peer review on the MedRxiv preprint server and will be submitted to a scientific journal. Nicolelis discovered that the places which had lower Covid-19 infection rates and a slower case growth had suffered intense outbreaks of dengue in 2019 or 2020.

The study said, referring to dengue virus antibodies and the novel coronavirus, this striking finding raises the possibility of immunological cross-reactivity between dengue’s Flavivirus serotypes and SARS-CoV-2.

While speaking to Reuters, Nicolelis pointed out previous studies that showed those with dengue antibodies in their blood could test falsely positive for Covid-19 even if they were never infected.

Nicolelis said, adding that further studies are needed to prove the connection, “This indicates that there is an immunological interaction between two viruses that nobody could have expected because the two viruses are from completely different families."

The study focuses on an important co-relation between lower incidences, mortality, and growth rate of the virus in Brazil, where levels of antibodies to dengue were higher.

The team led by Nicolelis also found a similar relation between dengue and Covid-19 in several parts of Latin America, Asia, and islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.

Nicolelis added that his team came across the dengue discovery by accident, during a study focused on how Covid-19 had spread through Brazil, in which they discovered that highways played a major role in the distribution of cases across the country.

After identifying certain case-free spots on the map, the team went in search of possible explanations and a breakthrough came when the spread of dengue was compared with that of Covid-19.