Dengue: Foreshadowing from Ancient Foe

Abstract

Richmond Ronald Gomes

Dengue is a painful, debilitating mosquito-borne disease(female mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, principally Aedes aegypti)caused by any one of four closely related dengue viruses. It is endemic in tropical and subtropical continent. World health organization (WHO) currently estimates there may be 50 -100 million dengue infections worldwide every year with over 2.5 billion people at risk of dengue. Symptomatic dengue virus infection may manifest as undifferentiated fever, classical dengue fever (with or without unusual hemorrhages), and dengue hemorrhagic fever (with or without shock). Expanded dengue syndrome(EDS) was coined by WHO in the year 2012 to describe cases, which do not fall into either dengue shock syndrome or dengue hemorrhagic fever. The atypical manifestations noted in expanded dengue are multisystem and multifaceted with organ involvement, such as liver, brain, heart, kidney, central/peripheral nervous system, gastrointestinal tract, lympho reticular system.

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