ABSTRACT
Thirty-seven serum samples and five serum-CSF pairs collected from 42 acutely ill patients admitted to hospitals in Maharashtra (Bombay, Pune and Nasik); Orissa (Raurkela) and South Goa were referred to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune (Maharashtra, India) for serodiagnosis. These patients had clinical manifestations of fever, hemorrhagic manifestations, hepatomegaly, shock syndrome and encephalopathy. Sixty-six percent of patients were children below ten years of age. Serological investigations revealed infection to dengue virus in all the patients as indicated in detection of IgM antibodies predominantly to dengue viral antigens. An important outcome of the study is that 10 patients referred to NIV with a provisional diagnosis of viral encephalitis proved to be dengue.
Subject(s)
Adolescent , Adult , Antibodies, Viral/analysis , Brain Diseases/physiopathology , Child , Child, Preschool , Dengue/complications , Female , Humans , Immunoglobulin M/blood , India , Infant , Male , Middle AgedABSTRACT
An epidemic of febrile illness with hemorrhagic manifestations occurred in certain parts of Mangalore city, Karnataka state, India, from the last week of July 1993. The epidemic reached its peak by mid-August and then started declining. Sporadic cases, however, continued to occur till early December. About 200 cases were reported covering all age groups and both sexes. The cases presented with pyrexia, myalgia, arthralgia and headache. Palatal petechiae, magenta colored tongue with central coating, maculopapular rash and facial flush were observed as classical signs. The tourniquet test was positive in 12% of the cases. Hemorrhage was observed in the form of epistaxis (2 cases), subconjunctival hemorrhage (2 cases) or purpura (3 cases). There were no deaths which were attributable to the epidemic. Five strains of dengue (DEN-2) virus were recovered from the acute-phase sera. Dengue virus-specific IgM type of antibodies were detected in 29/116 (25%) sera. Breeding of Aedes aegypti was observed in some of the areas where cases had occurred. No virus was isolated from any of the field-caught Ae. aegypti mosquitos.