Dengue Fever Many Years but No Vaccine

Talking about diseases without vaccines. An interesting case is dengue fever, also known as backbone fever.

Dengue fever is an infectious disease caused by the dengue virus, an RNA virus of the genus Flavirius, which is transmitted by the mosquitoes in the genus Aedes. When a mosquito carrying dengue virus bites a person, the virus enters the skin with the mosquito’s saliva. It enters the white blood cells, and reproduces inside the cells while they travel throughout the body. The only existing vaccine was approved this 2021. This vaccine is limited to people between the ages of 9-45 years old with confirmed previous infection and/or who live in endemic areas. This is a great limitation in trying to eradicate and control this disease; therefore, reducing the number and the habitat of mosquitoes and limiting the probability of biting are the best types of prevention we can carry out.

Most infected people are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms; others have more severe symptoms; and in a very small portion of infected individuals the disease is life-threatening. Treatment includes oral or intravenous rehydration for mild cases of disease, and intravenous fluids and blood transfusion for severe causes.

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