Understanding Dengue Fever Symptoms, Prevention, and Treatment
Overview
Dengue fever, or DENG-gey fever, is a disease spread by mosquitoes that can be found worldwide in tropical and subtropical regions. Gentle dengue fever causes a high fever and influenza like side effects. Dengue hemorrhagic fever, also known as the severe form, can result in severe bleeding, a sudden drop in blood pressure (shock), and death.
Every year, millions of people around the world contract dengue fever. Southeast Asia, the western Pacific islands, Latin America, and Africa are the regions where dengue fever is most prevalent. However, there have been new outbreaks of the disease, including those in Europe and the southern United States.
Dengue fever vaccines are being developed by researchers. For the time being, the best ways to avoid infection in areas where dengue fever is common are to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes and take steps to reduce their population.
Symptoms
Many individuals experience no signs or side effects of a dengue contamination.
At the point when side effects do happen, they might be confused with different sicknesses — like this season’s virus — and as a rule start four to 10 days after you are nibbled by a tainted mosquito.
Dengue fever causes a high fever — 104 F (40 C) — and any of the accompanying signs and side effects:
Cerebral pain
Muscle, bone or joint agony
Sickness
Regurgitating
Torment behind the eyes
Enlarged organs
Rash
The vast majority recuperate in the span of a week or somewhere in the vicinity. Now and again, side effects deteriorate and can become perilous. This is called serious dengue, dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock condition.
Serious dengue happens when your veins become harmed and flawed. Furthermore, the quantity of cluster shaping cells (platelets) in your circulation system drops. This can prompt shock, inward dying, organ disappointment and even passing.
Cautioning indications of serious dengue fever — which is a hazardous crisis — can grow rapidly. The admonition signs as a rule start the primary little while after your fever disappears, and may include:
Extreme stomach torment
Determined retching
Draining from your gums or nose
Blood in your pee, stools or regurgitation
Draining under the skin, which could look like swelling
Troublesome or quick relaxingWeakness
Crabbiness or fretfulness
When to see a specialist
Extreme dengue fever is a perilous health related crisis. Look for guaranteed clinical consideration in the event that you’ve as of late visited a region in which dengue fever is known to happen, you have had a fever and you foster any of the advance notice signs. Cautioning signs incorporate serious stomach torment, spewing, trouble breathing, or blood in your nose, gums, regurgitation or stools.
On the off chance that you’ve been voyaging as of late and foster a fever and gentle side effects of dengue fever, call your primary care physician.
Causes
Dengue fever is brought about by any of four kinds of dengue infections. You can’t get dengue fever from being around a contaminated individual. All things being equal, dengue fever is spread through mosquito nibbles.
The two kinds of mosquitoes that most frequently spread the dengue infections are normal both in and around human lodgings. At the point when a mosquito chomps an individual contaminated with a dengue infection, the infection enters the mosquito. Then, when the tainted mosquito nibbles someone else, the infection enters that individual’s circulation system and causes a disease.
After you’ve recuperated from dengue fever, you have long haul invulnerability to the sort of infection that contaminated you — however not to the next three dengue fever infection types. This implies you can be tainted again later on by one of the other three infection types. Your gamble of creating extreme dengue fever increments in the event that you get dengue fever a second, third or fourth time.
Risk factors
You have a more serious gamble of creating dengue fever or a more extreme type of the infection if:
You live or go in tropical regions.
Being in tropical and subtropical regions expands your gamble of openness to the infection that causes dengue fever. Particularly high-risk regions incorporate Southeast Asia, the western Pacific islands, Latin America and Africa.
You have had dengue fever before.
Past contamination with a dengue fever infection builds your gamble of serious side effects in the event that you get dengue fever once more.
Complications
Extreme dengue fever can cause inside draining and organ harm. Shock can result from dangerously low blood pressure. Death can result from severe dengue fever in some instances.
It is possible for pregnant women to transmit the dengue fever virus to their unborn child during childbirth. Dengue fever during pregnancy also increases the risk of preterm birth, low birth weight, and fetal distress in infants.
Prevention
Vaccine
In region of the existence where dengue fever is normal, one dengue fever antibody (Dengvaxia) is endorsed for individuals ages 9 to 45 who have previously had dengue fever something like once. Over the course of a year, three doses of the vaccine are administered.
Only individuals with a documented history of dengue fever or seropositivity (a blood test that indicates previous infection with one of the dengue viruses) are eligible to receive the vaccine. Receiving the vaccine appears to increase the likelihood of severe dengue fever and subsequent hospitalization due to dengue fever in seronegative individuals who have not previously experienced the disease.
Dengvaxia isn’t accessible for voyagers or for individuals who live in the mainland US. However, in 2019, the vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States for individuals aged 9 to 16 who had previously been infected with dengue fever and reside in the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where dengue fever is prevalent.
Prevent biting mosquitoes.
The World Health Organization emphasizes that the vaccine alone is not sufficient to reduce dengue fever in areas where the disease is prevalent. Dengue fever can still be stopped from spreading by controlling mosquito populations and preventing mosquito bites.
If you live in or travel to a region where dengue fever is prevalent, the following suggestions may help lower your risk of being bitten by mosquitoes:
Stay in a house with a window or air conditioning. The mosquitoes that convey the dengue infections are generally dynamic from sunrise to sunset, however they can likewise chomp around evening time.
Wear defensive attire. At the point when you go into mosquito-swarmed regions, wear a long-sleeved shirt, long jeans, socks and shoes.
Apply an insect repellent. Permethrin can be applied to your apparel, shoes, setting up camp stuff and bed netting. Additionally, clothing containing permethrin can be purchased. Use a repellent with a DEET concentration of at least 10% on your skin.
Reduce mosquito habitat. The mosquitoes that convey the dengue infection normally live in and around houses, rearing in standing water that can gather in such things as utilized auto tires. Eliminating areas where mosquitoes lay their eggs can help reduce their numbers. empty and clean any containers that have standing water, like flower vases, animal dishes, and planting containers, at least once per week. Between cleanings, cover standing water containers.
Diagnosis
Dengue fever’s signs and symptoms can be easily mistaken for those of other diseases like chikungunya, Zika virus, malaria, and typhoid fever, making it difficult to diagnose.
Your primary care physician will probably get some information about your clinical and travel history. Make certain to portray worldwide excursions exhaustively, including the nations you visited and the dates, as well as any reach you might have had with mosquitoes.
Your PCP may likewise draw an example of blood to be tried in a lab for proof of disease with one of the dengue infections.
Treatment
No particular treatment for dengue fever exists.
Drink a lot of water as you recover from dengue fever. Summon your PCP right assuming you have any of the accompanying signs and side effects of parchedness:
Diminished pee
Few or no tears
Dry mouth or lips
Torpidity or disarray
Cold or damp furthest point
The over-the-counter (OTC) drug acetaminophen (Tylenol, others) can assist with lessening muscle torment and fever. However, in the event that you have dengue fever, you ought to keep away from other OTC pain killers, including headache medicine, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) and naproxen sodium (Aleve). These pain killers can expand the gamble of dengue fever draining inconveniences.
On the off chance that you have serious dengue fever, you might require:
Strong consideration in a clinic
Intravenous (IV) liquid and electrolyte substitution
