The Hospital Ramón and Cajal of Madrid has been diagnosed with dengue fever in a young man who had not travelled to areas of risk and that could be the first infection confirmed genetically in the world of sexual transmission of the virus of the disease. There are only references in the scientific literature of a similar case in South Korea, although the publication medical reference UpToDate says that “to date there has been no communications confirmed sexual transmission of the virus”.
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The spread, which was ratified by the National Centre for Microbiology of the Carlos III Institute of Health, occurred in the mid of the month of September, and the sexual partner of the sick was another man who had recently traveled to Cuba and Dominican Republic, countries in which the disease live a strong rebound.
“The patient presented symptoms compatible with dengue, including high fever, skin rash and intense pain”, explains Santiago Moreno, chief of the Infectious Diseases service at the Ramón and Cajal. The clinical suspicion was confirmed in the laboratory, and opened up new questions about the origin of the infection. The absence of travel to endemic areas was added the fact that in the Community of Madrid is not settled, the tiger mosquito —Aedes albopictus—, which inhabits other zones of Spain, as the mediterranean coast, where he has acted in a vector in other cases indigenous. The patient also had recently visited these areas. The incubation period of dengue fever is typically between four and 10 days.
“we Had to do a detailed research work,” stresses Brown. The Tropical Medicine unit of the Ramón and Cajal, a team led by Francesca Norman, came to a person with whom the patient had had sex and that “shortly before she had also presented symptoms compatible with dengue fever after return from trip, but who had not been diagnosed of dengue by the health services,” adds Moreno.
the research also involved the Directorate-General of Public Health of the Community of Madrid, which carried out inspections entomology that “did not detect the presence of the mosquito trigre neither in the residence nor in any of the places of the Community of Madrid, visited by the two cases,” according to a spokesman.
The epidemiologist Susana Jiménez and the biologist Andrés Irisio, Public Health, stress that “the importance of the case lies in the fact that it is the first described” transmission of the disease in an area without mosquitoes can act as vectors of the disease”. “In any case, it is a way rare, so the risk to the population derived from this finding is considered to be low”, add both to experts.
dengue fever is a disease caused by a virus that is usually transmitted through the bite of a mosquito and is endemic in several countries of America, southeast asia, and Africa. The clinical picture is characterized by a general feeling of illness, high fever, headache and a rash on the face that spreads over the neck, chest, and extremities.
All the cases detected in Spain until October of 2018 had been imported, as they are called cases diagnosed in people who had acquired the disease abroad. A year ago, however, were diagnosed the first cases of indigenous transmission of the virus by the tiger mosquito in the three members of the same family of Murcia; then, two others in the same region; and, finally, a sixth case in Catalonia. In all of them, the insect bites first to an imported case and, after suffering an infection process in your body, transmits the disease by biting another person.
in The past month of September was detected a new indigenous cases in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. The Madrid would be the eighth contagion indigenous registered in Spain, although on this occasion the path of contagion has been different. France and Croatia have also been registered in Europe episodes are indigenous to the disease, all linked to the tiger mosquito.
Although the dengue virus has been detected in semen and vaginal secretions of sick people, the cases of sexual transmission have not been confirmed to date in the scientific literature.
