Does Dengue Fever Last?

Dengue fever is a disease common to tropical areas, including popular tourist destinations in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The virus that produces dengue is easily contracted and produces a short bout with fever and illness that can be so severe as to be potentially lethal. There is also no vaccine for dengue, so a thorough education about the disease is necessary before embarking to dengue-bearing areas.

Geography

1. Dengue fever is found in tropical countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Guyana, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Venezuela and Vietnam. It is found in places where malaria is also common, but unlike malaria can be found just as often in urban as in rural areas.

Effects

2. Dengue symptoms include severe headaches and muscle pains (the joint pains associated with dengue have given it the nickname "breakbone" fever); red skin rashes and high fever. Abdominal problems can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Mild cases are frequently misdiagnosed as influenza.

Time Frame

3. The typical bout with dengue lasts for a week, being punctuated by a spike in fever toward the end.

Features

4. Dengue is caused by a virus that is transmitted most often by the day-feeding mosquito breed Aedes aegypti. This mosquito also transmits yellow fever.

Prevention/Solution

5. One of the worst things about dengue is that there is no vaccine available. The only preventative measures revolve around mosquito control. On a health policy level, education about mosquito breeding and insecticide use are common dengue prevention measures. On a personal level, the use of insect repellent and mosquito netting, to prevent bites and therefore transmission, are also effective in reducing the odds of infection.

ALL About Dengue Fever & Malaria

Dengue fever and malaria are both viral diseases transmitted by mosquitoes. Both diseases share common geographic areas and dengue fever is also prevalent in urban areas of the tropics. Dengue fever and malaria share similar symptoms; dengue fever is often misdiagnosed as malaria.

Identification

1. The symptoms of dengue fever and malaria are quite similar; initially, people infected with either disease may display fever, chills, sweating, headaches, nausea, body aches and general malaise. The malaria virus has an incubation period of 7 to 30 days, and a dengue fever virus has an incubation period of 3 to 15 days. Both malaria and dengue fever can have severe complications; dengue fever can cause dengue hemorrhagic fever, and malaria can cause acute kidney failure and metabolic acidosis.

Significance

2. Malaria is caused by female Anopheles mosquitoes, and dengue fever is caused by Aedes aegypti mosquitos. Unlike the mosquitoes that cause malaria, dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes bite during the day. Mosquitos who spread both diseases do so by biting an infected person and then biting a non-infected person. Malaria is one of the most common viral diseases in the world and is a large public health problem in developing nations.

Geography

3. Travelers and locals are at risk for dengue fever and malaria in tropic and subtropic regions; dengue fever has also become increasingly prevalent in urban areas of such regions. Malaria is particularly endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, where it causes the death of hundreds of thousands of people every year, mostly children. Areas that are at particular risk include Central America, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Southeast Asia and parts of South America.

Prevention/Solution

4. There is no vaccine for dengue fever or malaria, but preventative drugs are available to reduce the risk of contracting malaria. These prophylactic drugs must be taken daily or weekly and are generally only a reasonable option for visitors to malaria-stricken areas; local populations are not often able to afford the cost of continual medication. Additional precautions to prevent malaria and dengue fever are the wearing of long pants and long-sleeved shirts, use of mosquito netting and mosquito repellant that contains DEET.

Potential

5. Because malaria and dengue fever are particularly common in developing nations that experience remarkable poverty, drugs and medications are not reasonable to treat most cases. Instead, researchers are working at developing vaccinations. Governments are also working on ways to eliminate the disease-carrying mosquito populations, but such progress is slow and difficult to enforce.