Dr. Pryanka Thakur, Research Scientist has been awarded with the best Prestigious ‘IVS—Young Scientist Award 2024’ (Medical) for her original research work on “Role of NLRP-3 inflammasome and Beclin-1/LC3B autophagy gene markers in the mediation of virus replication and cytokine storm in the severity of dengue patients”. It was awarded in the recently held International Conference of the Indian Virological Society (VIROCON 2024) at the Defence Research & Development Establishment (DRDE), Gwalior, under the aegis of IVS.
 Dengue is a self-limiting arboviral infection, being transmitted by the
 Asian Tiger mosquito, the Aedes aegypti, which has a preference to bite during dawn and dusk, and the circulation of the virus is maximum during the post-monsoon season in North India. The transmission of virus continuous till the atmospheric temperature falls below 15 0 C coinciding between the first or 2 nd week of December. Because of low atmospheric temperature, mosquito breeding falls to minimum level, thereby halting the dengue transmission.
The question that remains unanswered is ‘‘why the self-limiting dengue leads in 5-10% of cases into complicated dengue in the form of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS)’’, where secondary dengue remained to be a predisposing factor.
Further, the study revealed that in severe dengue cases there was significant upregulation of NLRP-3 inflammasome gene and autophagy genes, which paved the way to understand the involvement of Inflammasome and autophagy genes to aggravate the dengue disease leading to mortality. Thus, blocking the pathways through agents like 3 MA helped to overcome the possible ‘‘cytokine storm’’ as observed in severe dengue patients in In-Vitro experiments.