Dengue Symptoms

[Peter Charles]

On 28 Sep 1995 justin at centcon.com wrote:

> Could someone tell me the symptoms of the non-hemmhoragic strains of dengue? I'd be ever greatful. Thanks...
> 
> Justin
> 

Justin,

The description I'm about to quote was originally published in Health Notes
in 1922, and I received a copy of it from Promed:

"Dengue is an acute infectious, febrile disease.  It is characterized by 
fever, frequently by two paroxysms with an intermission, pains in the 
joints and tendons, muscular soreness, and frequently accompanied by skin 
eruption.  The disease is self-limitted and rarely fatal."

I would add that the muskuloskeletal pains can be fairly impressive, and 
are the reason this disease was once called "Break-Bone Fever".  It is 
spread by the bite of infected Aedes aegypti mosquitos, and comes in 4 
serotypes.  Immunity to any one of the 4 serotypes (by previous exposure)
does not confer protection against the other 3, and is in fact thought to 
exacerbate the disease upon exposure to one of the other serotypes (a 
phenomenon known as "immune enhancement" of disease).  This is thought to 
be one of the mechanisms by which simple dengue fever becomes dengue 
hemorrhagic fever/shock syndrome (DHF/SS). To my knowledge, there are no 
strains (ie, D1-D4) that specifically *cause* DHF/SS.

The etiologic agent of dengue fever is dengue virus, a member of the 
flavivirus family.  It is an enveloped, positive-sense single stranded 
RNA containing virus.  I believe that infectious molecular clones now 
exist for all four serotypes.

Hope the info helps

Peter Charles, PhD
Department of Pathology (Neuropathology)
Albert Einstein College of Medicine