
A Single Protein Is the Root of Dengue's Virulence - snake117
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/single-protein-root-dengues-virulence-180956544/
======
Mz
_Young says the NS1 findings mean that to treat dengue, it might be possible
to use existing drugs. Some version of those that treat sepsis, for example,
might work._

So, my understanding of the article is they isolated the protein that causes a
strong inflammatory response and found that this directly causes the blood
vessels to get leaky and behaves like a toxin. They have a broad idea of the
mechanism whereby Dengue causes so much havoc in the body and can lead to
death. Understanding that mechanism means they can infer which therapies
already in existence might be helpful instead of playing with lives of
patients already in a vulnerable state and kind of randomly trying things.

This is really exciting stuff. So much of medicine is vague and hand-wavy.
This is a great direction for research to go.

~~~
ghaff
Also found the explanation of the mechanism behind why having Dengue a second
time (of a different strain) could be so bad interesting. I knew that was the
case--I read some about Dengue when I got it last year--but I didn't know why.

------
rafaelm
Very interesting stuff. I always wondered why the second time a person got
dengue it's usually more dangerous.

My wife got dengue fever about 8 years ago. Two months ago, she caught it
again, this time it was the much more dangerous dengue hemorrhagic fever
variant. Not fun.

Before ,I always thought that it was just a myth that the second time around
it's usually hemorrhagic.

------
PeterisP
Does this imply that we now have identified a simple means (i.e., a single
protein with a known encoding) to make a weaponized strain of something
popular?

You know, just like the common cold or flu, but also causes deadly internal
bleeding while it's at it.

~~~
Mz
I think probably not. The entire virus is necessary to the process of
replication. If you mass produced this one protein, it would likely perform
similar to a poison. We have tons of that already, all around us. No big.

