Can dengue fever lead to death and how to recover from a dengue attack, let’s find out more.
Dengue is a disease … serious disease. Perhaps many of us have heard of dengue, but do not know more about it.
What is dengue?
Dengue is transmitted by the bite of an Aedes mosquito infected with any one of the four dengue viruses. It occurs in tropical and subtropical areas of the world.
Dengue is an infectious disease and is very dangerous because to date there has been no drug or antidote to cure it. Dengue can attack adults and children resulting from the bite of the Aedes mosquito.
The disease usually occurs in urban areas rather than rural areas and if it attacks, the disease will last for ten days and sometimes take a long time to fully recover.
Dengue disease is caused by a virus called dengue virus. This virus originated from the source known as Togaviridae. This virus normally breeds in an insect such as a mosquito. There are four serotypes of the virus that have been identified ie den 1, den 2, den 3, and den 4. All of these serotypes can stimulate different antibody formations.
However, the immune system produced by our body is not exhaustive and could not protect us from all types of dengue viruses. It will only protect the individual from that virus type. The virus will enter the human blood circulation through the bite of the Aedes mosquito and can be found in only a short period of four to five days in the early stages of the disease.
The Aedes mosquito is a carrier of the dengue virus. Mosquito bites are the way they spread the virus from one person to another person. From one bite, a mosquito can suck between two to four milligrams of blood which is 1.5 times a person’s body weight.
How dengue fever is spread?
The mosquito will bite a person which has already been infected by the dengue virus and then it will transfer the virus through the biting of a healthy person. There are two most serious types of dengue fever which are known as Hemoragik Dengue (DHF) and Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS).
Here are two types of dengue, namely:
i) Classical Dengue Fever
If a person has been attacked by this disease, they will show symptoms of fever, rash, body aches, sore joints, and sore muscles. Symptoms of the disease are usually not severe and rarely can cause death. This type of fever has also been called a broken bone fever or breakbone fever.
ii) dengue hemorrhagic fever
This disease usually occurs in children, especially in the age group of 2-13 years. At the early stage (for 2-4 days) the symptoms are the same as classical dengue fever and are followed by more severe symptoms such as low blood pressure, rash and red spots on the body, bleeding gums, bloody diarrhea (stool black) accompanied by convulsions and unconsciousness. It often causes death if no immediate treatment is given.
Signs or symptoms:
- Classical dengue
Signs and symptoms of dengue fever are dependent on the age of the victim. For infants or children, the main symptom is rashes accompanied by high fever. While for adults, a strong fever will appear suddenly which will then last for 2-7 days, headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle, and joint pains followed by rashes that will emerge on the third to fourth day. And results of laboratory tests will show that the total lymphocyte and platelet in the blood will decrease.
- Haemorrhagic dengue
Dengue fever has four main clinical features such as very hot fever, bleeding, liver enlargement, and circulatory system failure. Bleeding occurs is as red spots under the skin, gums, blood in the stool (black stools), bloody urine, and sometimes excessive menstrual.
Liver enlargement occurred in the early stages of the disease. Enlargement of the heart can reach two to four centimeters below the right rib. Circulatory failure is indicated by symptoms such as cold and congested skin, blue, and increased heart rate. They also seem restless and weak and then quickly suffered shock or seizures. This condition is also known as dengue shock syndrome (DSS).
Can dengue fever lead to death?
Yes, it can, if a person did not get immediate treatment.
So far no specific treatment for the dengue virus. However, the usual treatment for dengue fever is:-
Treatment of classical dengue fever:
The treatment given is to stabilize the patient’s condition by reducing the body temperature and avoiding the occurrence of bleeding.
Treatment of dengue hemorrhagic fever:
A very hot fever, loss of appetite, and vomiting are caused by dehydration. Patients are encouraged to drink more water. A very hot fever also increases the risk of occurrence of seizures, the fever should be controlled with antipyretics. The most critical time is from the third to the seventh day. The injection of intravenous flow should be increased if the count of hematocrit increases as this reflects the degree of loss of plasma. ( Hematocrit is the volume of the SDM in the blood which is specified by the percentage of entire blood volume (eg, cells or fluids alone without
“Plasma” of blood). The value of hematocrit shows the density of blood equivalent to the amount of oxygen carried. The low percentage of hematocrit is a sign of anemia.
What will happen if a person did not get immediate treatment?
– Easy bruising
– Bleeding under the skin, the nose, or gums
– It may be followed by bleeding all over the body which can cost our life.
The character of the aedes mosquito:-
– It likes to attack its victim at dawn and dusk. (5 am – 8 am and 5 pm – 8 pm)
– It likes to breed in crystal clear water. And this explains why dengue likes urban than a rural areas.
A healthy lifestyle will mitigate the possibility of the dengue virus.