Dengue Fever Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dengue Fever, including details on symptoms, risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, prevention.

Dengue fever in humanized NOD/SCID mice.

Bente DA, Melkus MW, Garcia JV, Rico-Hesse R

Department of Virology and Immunology, Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, 7620 NW Loop 410, San Antonio, TX 78227, USA.

The increased transmission and geographic spread of dengue fever (DF) and its more severe presentation, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), make it the most important mosquito-borne viral disease of humans (50 to 100 million infections/year) (World Health Organization, Fact sheet 117, 2002). There are no vaccines or treatment for DF or DHF because there are no animal or other models of human disease; even higher primates do not show symptoms after infection (W. F. Scherer, P. K. Russell, L. Rosen, J. Casals, and R. W. Dickerman, Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 27:590-599, 1978). We demonstrate that nonobese diabetic/severely compromised immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice xenografted with human CD34+ cells develop clinical signs of DF as in humans (fever, rash, and thrombocytopenia), when infected in a manner mimicking mosquito transmission (dose and mode). These results suggest this is a valuable model with which to study pathogenesis and test antidengue products.

Published 17 October 2005 in J Virol, 79(21): 13797-9.
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