For decades there has been a counterintuitive and hotly debated theory about
dengue infections: that antibodies generated by a previous bout of dengue could actually put a person at risk of more severe disease if they contracted the virus a second time.
And now American and Nicaraguan scientists have published evidence that may silence the skeptics. Antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE as it’s known in scientific circles, can happen, they reported, when subsequent infection occurs at a time when antibodies generated by the prior infection have fallen to a specific low range.
Nikos Vasilakis, an associate professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, used to be among the disbelievers — primarily because, though ADE was seen in lab experiments (in vitro), proof in people (in vivo) had been absent.
“I’m one of those people who for years I was questioning that,” he admitted.
“This paper, what it does, it shows for the first time the narrow range of antibody concentrations … that actually produces enhancement of disease in vivo,” said Vasilakis, who was not involved in the study. “I have bias against ADE in general, but this is a very good study.”
The work was published
in the journal Science.
