DENGUE

DENGUE

The deterioration in the quality of air and water results in the occurrences of various forms of diseases in different parts of the country. For example, parts of southern India experience widespread cases of chicken guano, U.P. and Bihar face problems of Encephalitis and Meningitis. Delhi and the surrounding states observe increase in Dengue cases after rainy season and almost in all states Jaundice, Typhoid, Viral fever and gasteroentitis cases are on the rise.


Efforts are always made by the Central and State agencies to provide necessary medical assistance and reduce the causalities. However, it is also important that each one of us should owe the responsibility to provide the desired help as and when required. One such way could be that of making ourselves available to donate blood so that the lives of many are saved. The Jamia Dengue Helpline is primarily aimed at creating a feeling of universal brotherhood and to motivate people across various sections of the society as to how they could involve themselves in this great mission.


The present initiative will be directed towards mobilizing people for blood donation to the needy ones, including dengue patients, and to make available information pertaining to the potential donors so that needy persons may contact them as and when required.



DENGUE FEVER


What is Dengue Fever?


• Dengue [DEN-ghee] is a flu-like viral disease spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes. Dengue hemorrhagic fever is a severe, often fatal, complication of dengue.

• Dengue occurs in most tropical areas of the world. Most U.S. cases occur in travelers returning from abroad, but the dengue risk is increasing for persons living along the Texas-Mexico border and in other parts of the southern United States.

• There is no specific treatment for dengue.
Prevention centers on avoiding mosquito bites in areas where dengue occurs or might occur and eliminating breeding sites.

How can dengue be prevented?

There is no vaccine to prevent dengue. Prevention centers on avoiding mosquito bites when traveling to areas where dengue occurs and when in U.S. areas, especially along the Texas-Mexico border, where dengue might occur. Eliminating mosquito breeding sites in these areas is another key prevention measure.

Avoid mosquito bites when traveling in tropical areas:

• Use mosquito repellents on skin and clothing.
• When outdoors during times that mosquitoes are biting, wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants tucked into socks.
• Avoid heavily populated residential areas.
• When indoors, stay in air-conditioned or screened areas. Use bed nets if sleeping areas are not screened or air-conditioned.
If you have symptoms of dengue, report your travel history to your doctor.

Eliminate mosquito breeding sites in areas where dengue might occur:

• Eliminate mosquito breeding sites around homes. Discard items that can collect rain or run-off water, especially old tires.
Regularly change the water in outdoor bird baths and pet and animal water containers



What are the signs and symptoms of dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever?


Dengue fever usually starts suddenly with a high fever, rash, severe headache, pain behind the eyes, and muscle and joint pain. The severity of the joint pain has given dengue the name "break bone fever." Nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite are common. A rash usually appears 3 to 4 days after the start of the fever. The illness can last up to 10 days, but complete recovery can take as long as a month. Older children and adults are usually sicker than young children.
Most dengue infections result in relatively mild illness, but some can progress to dengue hemorrhagic fever. With dengue hemorrhagic fever, the blood vessels start to leak and cause bleeding from the nose, mouth, and gums. Bruising can be a sign of bleeding inside the body. Without prompt treatment, the blood vessels can collapse, causing shock (dengue shock syndrome). Dengue hemorrhagic fever is fatal in about 5 percent of cases, mostly among children and young adults.


What is the treatment for dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever?

There is no specific treatment for dengue. Persons with dengue fever should rest and drink plenty of fluids. They should be kept away from mosquitoes for the protection of others. Dengue hemorrhagic fever is treated by replacing lost fluids. Some patients need transfusions to control bleeding.

What can be done to reduce the risk of acquiring dengue?

There is no vaccine for preventing dengue. The best preventive measure for residents living in areas infested with Aedes aegypti is to eliminate the places where the mosquito lays her eggs, primarily artificial containers that hold water.

Items that collect rainwater or are used to store water (for example, plastic containers, big drums, buckets, or used automobile tires) should be covered or properly discarded. Pet and animal watering containers and vases with fresh flowers should be emptied and scoured at least once a week. This will eliminate the mosquito eggs and larvae and reduce the number of mosquitoes present in these areas

If you live or travel in tropical areas

Living in or traveling to an area where dengue fever viruses are present puts you at risk of the disease. These areas include many tropical and subtropical areas around the world, for example:
 Central and South America
 Southeast Asia
 The Caribbean
 Africa
 India
 The Middle East
 The South and Central Pacific
Particularly high-risk areas include tropical Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Dengue virus transmission may occur year-round, although the risk is highest during a recognized dengue fever outbreak.




Dengue fever is a disease transmitted by specific mosquitoes and found in tropical areas around the world including parts of India
Symptoms
Infection with the dengue virus may be sub clinical (no apparent symptoms) or may cause illness ranging from a mild fever to a severe, even fatal condition, ie.dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome.
The symptoms may last up to a week. Some people may experience a resurgence of fever and other symptoms that may last another 2-3 days.
Dengue fever symptoms
Symptoms are most commonly seen in adults and older children. Young children may show no symptoms. Typical symptoms may include:
sudden onset of fever (lasting three to seven days)
intense headache (especially behind the eyes)
muscle and joint pain (ankles, knees and elbows)
unpleasant metallic taste in mouth, loss of appetite, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain
flushed skin on face and neck, fine skin rash as fever subsides
rash on arms and legs, severe itching, peeling of skin and hair loss
minor bleeding (nose or gums) and heavy menstrual periods
extreme fatigue

Dengue hemorrhagic fever symptoms
This is a rare complication of dengue in Australia. More commonly seen in children aged under 15 years, but can occur in adults. Symptoms include:

same signs as dengue fever
2-5 days after onset of fever, rapid deterioration and cardiovascular disease
Perhaps shock and sometimes death.

Tests and diagnosis
Diagnosing dengue fever can be difficult. That's because its signs and symptoms can be easily confused with those of other diseases, such as malaria, leptospirosis and typhoid fever. Still, diagnosis of dengue fever is typically done by evaluating your signs and symptoms along with your medical and travel history. To diagnose your condition, your doctor will likely ask about these. In addition, your blood may be tested for evidence of a dengue virus.

Blood test

Laboratory tests, usually using a sample of your blood, are needed to confirm a diagnosis of dengue fever. If you have dengue fever, your blood may reveal the virus itself.

If not, blood tests known as hem agglutination inhibition (HI) assay, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) also can detect antigens, antibodies or nucleic acids specific to the viruses. These tests may take several days

Treatment
Dengue fever treatment
See a doctor / general practitioner (GP) immediately.
Wear insect repellent. If you have dengue fever, mosquitoes that bite you may pass dengue on to other people.
Drink plenty of liquids and take paracetamol for fever and pain. Do not take aspirin because it can affect blood clotting.
Dengue hemorrhagic fever treatment
All patients with dengue hemorrhagic fever need to be hospitalized for fluid therapy and monitoring.
Doctors and health professionals can refer to Dengue hemorrhagic fever: diagnosis, treatment, prevention and control (2nd edition. Geneva : World Health Organization, 1997) for detailed information on dengue symptoms and treatment.


Types of dengue
There are four types of dengue viruses that cause dengue fever worldwide - Dengue 1, 2, 3 and 4. A person infected with one type of dengue will subsequently only be immune to that type. They will not be immune to other types of dengue and will, in fact, be at risk of developing severe symptoms if they contract another type of dengue.

Dengue fever is a terrible viral disease blighting many of the world's tropical regions. Carried by mosquitoes, such as Aedes aegypti, 40% of the world's population is believed to be at risk from the infection. What is more, previous exposure to other strains of the fever does not confer protection. In fact, subsequent infections are significantly worse, and can result in fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever.

The lack of a functioning vaccine forced Scott O'Neill and Elizabeth McGraw to look for a more creative form of defence. Knowing that a parasite, Wolbachia pipientis, shortens the lifespan of host insects and could restrict dengue fever transmission by killing the insects before they can pass the infection on, O'Neill and his team successfully infected Ae. aegypti with a strain of the Wolbachia bacterium and shortened the mosquitoes' lifespan.
But before insects carrying the bacterium can be released into the environment, the O'Neill and McGraw teams have to convince international governments that mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia parasite could successfully limit transmission of the virus. McGraw and O'Neill had to find out how the bacterium affects the mosquito's physiology and behavior.
Knowing that Wolbachia slows down some insects' activity and speeds up others, the team decided to test how the parasite affects Ae. aegypti as they age and the infection takes hold. Working with uninfected and infected mosquitoes produced by Conor McMeniman, Oliver Evans and Eric Caragata used a system designed by Craig Williams to film the activities of male and female mosquitoes as they aged to find how the bacteria affected the insects' activity levels. According to McGraw, the experiments generated a huge amount of video data, so Evans teamed up with Megan Woolfit and David Green to pipe the data to a cluster of workstations to track the insects' movements and analyse their activity levels.
After a year of experimental design, data collection and analysis, it was clear that the infected mosquitoes were more active than the uninfected insects. Most surprisingly, as the mosquitoes aged and the infection took hold, it did not increase their activity levels further.
Having found that the insects became more active in response to their bacterial lodgers, Craig Franklin joined the team to help measure the insects' CO2 production to find how their metabolic rates respond to the parasite. Again, the insects' metabolic rates were higher than those of the uninfected mosquitoes.
So why are the infected insects more active than the uninfected insects? McGraw says there are three possible explanations; the insects are living fast and dying young; the insects are hungrier and consume more energy in their constant search for food; or the bacteria somehow affect the insects' tissues to change their behavior and increase their metabolic rate. McGraw suspects that the last explanation is the most likely.
Having shown that the activity levels of Walachia infected mosquitoes respond to the bacterium, McGraw and O'Neill are continuing to test how the infection affects the insects' biting behavior and whether a Walachia infection can become established in Ae. Aegypti populations to limit their life spans. Ultimately, McGraw and O'Neill hope to release infected mosquitoes into afflicted regions of the world to limit dengue fever transmission, but only once they are sure that the insects will do no harm to the environment.







References and Notes
• http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01385.html.
• http://www.jci.org/articles/view/JCI28607.
• http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/HPV-vaccine.
• http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/cervix/incidence/. http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000301/1369.html.. National Institutes of Health. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000893.htm.
• http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_2_2X_What_causes_cancer_of_the_cervix_Can_it_be_prevented_8.asp?sitearea=..
• http://www.ajph.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=11392939.
• http://www.mdlab.com/html/testing/hpv_typedetect.html.
• http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec22/ch252/ch252d.html.
• http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=9260.
• http://www.papscreen.org.au/