SINGAPORE: It may be years before a dengue vaccine or cure materialises, but doctors here are hopeful that a recently completed study will shed some light on how to manage the mosquito-borne disease better.

Initial results from the Early Dengue (Eden) infection and outcome study indicate that it may be possible to tell if a patient will develop severe dengue — a diagnosis that could be useful in the treatment and allocation of medical resources.

According to one of the researchers, Dr Ooi Eng Eong, there is currently no way of telling whether a patient will develop severe dengue.

But the Eden findings show that indicators such as blood platelet and viral counts can identify high-risk patients.

At present, 80 per cent of all dengue patients are warded, but this is not necessary, said Dr Ooi, because dengue fever — while debilitating — is generally non-life threatening.

But dengue haemorrhagic fever, which is more serious and affects 5 per cent of adult patients, can be fatal. So, the ability to make an early diagnosis is crucial to a patient’s well-being.

The Eden study also found that more adult Singaporeans than children fall prey to the disease, whereas the reverse is true in other parts of the world.

This creates a problem because World Health Organization guidelines for treatment, which are targeted at children, are not as useful for patients here.

As more patients here are adults, this can have impact on economic productivity.

According to Dr Ooi, the Eden results would be helpful in future studies.

“We can follow up on these implications and get more evidence to develop a guideline for care in the next one to two years,” he said.

The results where announced yesterday at the signing of a memorandum of understanding to enlarge the Singapore Dengue Consortium, which was formed in 2003 with six partners.

It has now been enlarged to 11 — the five new members are DSO National Laboratories, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, the Nanyang Technological University, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (A*Star) and the Experimental Therapeutics Centre (A*Star).

Dr Martin Hibberd, associate director of infectious diseases at the Genome Institute of Singapore — a founding member — noted that that the Republic is “uniquely well placed” to deal with dengue research.

“It is in an endemic area and suffers from the dengue problem. Singapore is also one of the few countries with the research capabilities to add to the field of dengue research,” he said. - TODAY/fa