What is Dengue? Dengue Fever Symptoms and Transmission

What is Dengue?

Every year millions of people around the world become victims of dengue. According to a research, every year 390 million people fall victim to dengue infection all over the world. Out of which 96 million people end up suffering from the disease. The risk of dengue is higher in the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia, Southern China, Taiwan, Pacific Islands, Mexico, Africa, Central and South America. However, dengue fever occurs most in South East Asia and Western Pacific Islands. In the last 10 to 12 years, the number of dengue patients has continuously increased in India. In September 2015, dengue disease was reported among 1872 people in New Delhi.

What is Dengue?

Dengue is a kind of dangerous disease which seems to be spreading among many people these days. Although the cause of dengue fever is the bite of a particular species of mosquito, but this mosquito only works to transmit the disease, in fact dengue is a virus-borne disease. It is found extensively in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. In case of mild dengue, there is high fever, pain in muscles and joints. Whereas in severe dengue, which is also called hemorrhagic fever, blood pressure suddenly decreases and the patient may even die. In this article, we are going to give you important information about the causes, symptoms and treatment of this disease.

Dengue Fever Causes

  • The biggest cause of dengue is mosquitoes.
  • Accumulation of water around the house.
  • Consuming infected water and food.

Dengue cannot be understood just by looking at the symptoms, for this tests should be done on the advice of a doctor. Dengue fever is confirmed only after blood test. Within 3-4 days, the patient's body is unable to fight against the dengue virus and it starts increasing.

Dengue Fever Symptoms

  • Symptoms of dengue take 3 to 15 days to appear. These symptoms never appear immediately after a mosquito bite.

  • Like other diseases, dengue can start with eye pain, loss of appetite, back pain, severe headache, chills, fever.

  • Within an hour of dengue virus spreading in the blood, pain in the joints starts and the person may also get fever up to 104 degrees. Low heart rate along with hypotension and rapid drop in blood pressure are also symptoms of dengue. Apart from this, redness of eyes, appearance of pink rash on the face, inflammation in lymph can also be indicators of dengue.

  • But all these symptoms occur only in the first stage of dengue which can last for 4 days.

  • After that the second phase starts in which the body temperature which has increased till now decreases and sweating starts. But before this, the body temperature becomes normal and the patient starts feeling better, but this does not last for more than 1 day and thus the symptoms of the second phase of dengue start appearing.

  • In the third phase of dengue, the body temperature starts increasing more than before, the red rashes which till now were only on the face, now start appearing on the whole body along with the face.

Dengue Fever Virology

  • There are 4 types of dengue viruses. These viruses are similar to West Nile infection and yellow fever. It is also called break bone fever.

  • Dengue fever can be caused by any one of the 4 types of viruses. In fact, dengue is not a disease that spreads through human-to-human contact; some medium is required to transfer its virus and this medium is mosquitoes. If a person gets dengue once, then after recovering from it, a special antibody against that virus is formed in the body, due to which the body's immunity against that virus increases.

  • Dengue viruses come in the Flaviviridae or yellow virus family. These are RNA viruses. Other viruses of this family are – Yellow Fever Virus, West Nile Virus, Virus of Encephalitis of St. Louis, Virus of Japanese Encephalitis, Virus of Encephalitis of Tick-Bone, Virus of Disease of Kyasanur Forest and Virus of Fever Omsk Hemorrhage.

  • It has been found that almost all the diseases caused by this virus are spread by mosquitoes which are known as arthropods and these viruses are also called arboviruses.

  • The genome of dengue virus is found in the range of 11000 nucleotide bases which code for three other types of proteins – E, C, prM. These proteins help in making virus particles and also make 7 other types of proteins whose names are- NS5, NS4a, NS2b, NS1, NS2a, NS3, NS4b. These proteins are mostly found in the cells of the infected host where replication of the virus takes place.

  • DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV- 4: Dengue fever can be caused by any one of these 4 viruses. Actually these are 4 serotypes of dengue virus.

Dengue Fever Transmission

  • It is spread by mosquitoes of the species named Aedes aegypti. It spreads when the mosquito has first bitten a patient, and then bit a healthy person and transmitted the dengue virus into the blood of that healthy person as well.

  • These mosquitoes are found most in latitudes 35 degrees south and 35 degrees north. Aedes mosquito attacks in the morning and evening. Humans are like hosts for it, even a single bite of a mosquito can cause the disease. However, due to the presence of dengue virus in the patient's blood, it can spread through infected blood or even through organ donation.

  • The possibility of this disease is strong in children below 10 years of age. It has been observed that the mortality rate in children due to dengue fever ranges from 6 to 30%. And the chances of death due to dengue increases in children less than one year old.

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