UQ and Alere team to develop dengue fever test

The University of Queensland has teamed up with local dengue fever specialists Alere Australia to develop a low-cost diagnostic test for the potentially fatal disease.

Professor Matt Cooper from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) will lead the project which has received a grant of $225,000 from the Australian Research council’s Linkage program.

Cooper said that the dengue virus has once again become a global health problem with some 2.5 billion people in 100 countries at risk. In Australia, there have been regular annual outbreaks in North Queensland since 2004, with last year’s being the worst in 50 years.

“Early, accurate detection is vital both for limiting transmission and treating the patient so the disease doesn't progress to dengue haemorrhagic fever,” Cooper said, yet globally, “only about three percent of people infected with the virus are currently being diagnosed accurately.”

The researchers will seek to map key dengue proteins to enable rapid diagnosis of a dengue infection, with a view to developing a low-cost device for diagnosing dengue fever in the field. This is seen as especially important for containing the disease in developing countries with limited medical resources.

“The proposed device would remove subjectivity from the interpretation of the test results and provide accurate early diagnoses, which will lead to improved strategic containment of outbreaks and better treatments to avoid serious secondary dengue infections,” Cooper said.