The research arm of the US Department of Defense wants to know when and where the next outbreak of chikungunya virus by mosquitoes will occur, and it offers 150,000 $ for the best new approach. The Agency for Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) announced today its first challenge of health, which requires teams of scientists to predict more than 6 months how debilitating the disease could spread in the Americas and the Caribbean.
Why is the Department of Defense take a particular interest chikungunya? For starters, "it is a very bad infection," said Matthew Hepburn, one in Office Program Manager Organic Technologies DARPA, which will carry the challenge. The virus causes high fever, joint and muscle pain, headaches, nausea, fatigue, and rash. It is very rarely fatal but painful swelling of the joints can be debilitating and sometimes persists for months. with uS forces deployed around the world, "we have a strong interest ... try to prevent our soldiers from being infected, "he said.
But recently, the threat has gotten a lot closer to home. Once considered a disease of the countries in Africa and developing Asia, chikungunya has a scientific attention startle when he emerged on the French island of Reunion in 07. Then last December, it reached the island Saint-Martin, and caused hundreds of thousands of cases in the Caribbean. The first four locally acquired cases in the United States were reported in Florida last month. At present, there is no vaccine available.
Hepburn said DARPA wants to find technologies that US health authorities can use to make decisions in case of an epidemic. "It is one thing to know what is happening on the ground now," he said, "but really to design your intervention decisions, you need to know what will happen next." The forecasts of the severity of an epidemic will be, where he could move, and that is most likely to help health officials focus resources in the right places, killing mosquitoes and their larvae, or elimination of potential breeding places in high-risk locations.
The Challenge were inspired by a similar competition to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) influenza-oriented forecasting field that has a more scientific attention chikungunya and enjoys influx annual data during the peak season. The winning bid of CDC, announced in June, Google and CDC combined data to accurately predict the peak and the intensity of the 2013-2014 season.
Chikungunya forecast is not as far as the flu, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who specializes in infectious disease dynamics. But in terms of a scientific problem to fight against it calls the disease "a great choice" for a DARPA challenge. There is an emerging threat in the Americas, but cases have been recorded in Africa and Asia for decades, which means there are a lot of historical data to work with, but it is unclear how it will apply to a potential outbreak here. He is optimistic that better prediction of chikungunya could also be useful to inform predictions about other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes such as dengue fever.
To enter the challenge, researchers must make a presentation every month, guess how chikungunya cases will occur in the rest of the competition to six months in each of the 35 member countries of the Pan American Health Organization . The design competition requires quick early predictions about candidates should send their first estimates September 1st but rewards teams to improve their accuracy as the challenge progresses. Ultimately, DARPA will award $ 150,000 and $ 100,000 to two high scoring teams and four honorable mention prize of $ 50,000 each.
This kind of prize money may not attract teams that are not already of resources to throw at the problem of chikungunya, Lessler predicted, although it may inspire new collaborations between groups.
"I am not convinced that we will see sensational progress," he said, "but I'd be happy to be surprised."
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