Canberra scientists are working to find a treatment for dengue fever as an epidemic grips Far North Queensland and experts fear it will eventually travel south.
There have been more than 300 confirmed cases of dengue fever in Cairns and Townsville. Five years ago, the virus claimed two lives in Australia.
There is no cure or vaccine for dengue fever and treatment focuses on fluids to prevent dehydration and medications to lower fever and reduce pain. But a biomedical sciences research group at the University of Canberra is trying to develop a drug to battle the virus.
The University of Canberra's Professor Suresh Mahalingam is working with researchers from the University of Wollongong and Canberra-based company Biotron to create a drug which targets particular viral proteins.
They are trying to design a drug which will bind to the proteins or ''block'' them, inhibiting infection by the virus or even slowing its growth.
''One of the major obstacles is that dengue virus itself has the ability to suppress some of the important antiviral proteins in the human body,'' Professor Mahalingam said.
''The virus protein can 'trick' the immune system and survive.''
Professor Mahalingam knows first-hand about the impacts of dengue fever.
The associate dean of research in biomedical sciences became infected as a student in Malaysia after leaving his bedroom windows open while sleeping. He spent two weeks recovering in hospital, feeling feverish and weak.
But Professor Mahalingam was more fortunate than many others. He recalled growing up in a village in Malaysia where a school friend became infected with the virus. The boy's parents kept him at home to look after him and within a week, he died. ''A lot of people in South-East Asia coming from village areas ... places which are not privileged and not knowing what this is all about, they have a lot of their children dying from dengue fever.''
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne infection, which is becoming increasingly prevalent around the world. The World Health Organisation estimates about 40 per cent of the world's population is at risk throughout the tropics and subtropics. The virus causes a severe, flu-like illness and sometimes a potentially deadly complication called haemorrhagic fever.
There are four different strains of dengue fever. Research suggests becoming infected with a second strain of dengue increases the risk of haemorrhagic fever 10 times.
John Curtin School of Medical Research fellow Mario Lobigs has worked on the entry mechanisms of the dengue fever virus and studied why it might cause disease.
Dr Lobigs said the increased risk of more severe dengue could relate to the faster spread of the virus in the body following an infection by a different strain. ''The virus infects better, it spreads faster, there's more virus there and then essentially your immune system gets overstimulated and then causes damage,'' he said.
''In Australia, that's not a problem until now, because we don't have any endemic dengue here, we only get seasonal introduction of dengue.''
But researchers are concerned the spread of mosquitoes, and the potential arrival of a second dengue-carrying mosquito, could result in more people suffering haemorrhagic fever.
Chief executive of the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Stephen Prowse, said this second, more aggressive mosquito the Asian tiger mosquito, or Aedes albopictus could survive in milder climates.
''If it arrives on the mainland, it has the potential to spread down south through the major population centres - certainly past Brisbane,'' he said.