Science U.S. travelers at risk of getting the disease are first in line.
The first vaccine against the mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya will likely come to market next month. With the debilitating disease now afflicting more than half the countries in the world and threatening to spread further, the imminent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the vaccine is “great news,” says Scott Weaver, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch whose own lab started to work on a chikungunya vaccine nearly 2 decades ago.
The vaccine, made by the French company Valneva, will likely be recommended mainly to U.S. travelers at first. But many expect an FDA approval will also grease the wheels for the vaccine to become available in the most affected countries.
First documented in 1952 in modern-day Tanzania, chikungunya means “disease that bends up the joints” in Kimakonde, an East African language. Although rarely fatal, chikungunya virus causes long-term, debilitating joint pain in up to 40% of people it infects, most of whom live in warm climates that have large populations of two mosquito species, Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus. Almost all cases in the United States have been in travelers who have returned from affected countries.