Dengue fever is an infectious arth ropod-borne viral disease. It is caused by a dengue virus, the virus is also treated as Arbovirus. As a fact about 50 million dengue infection occur every year. It belongs to family flaviviridae. It includes virus like Zika virus, yellow fever virus and west nile virus. In recent days Dengue fever is highly on rise. It leads to high fever so that patients feel pain like broken bones and some dengue rashes also occur on the skin. Also it is killing many people in recent years. Mostly it is spread via mosquitoes. Some people caught by light Dengue fever and can easily recover by drinking enough liquid, but sometimes dengue shock syndrome occurs which needs immediate medical treatment. In this blog I am going to describe about dengue symptoms, and dengue fever treatment. Following an image of Dengue fever suffered child is shown with some highlights of medicines.
How dengue fever spreads: Dengue fever is spread through bite of female mosquito Aedes aegypti. The mosquito becomes infected when it consumes blood of a person with infected virus. About a week mosquito can transmit virus to a healthy person. This mosquito can bite more than one person during feeding time and therefore is highly efficient epidemic vector mosquito.
dengue symptoms and cure: No vaccine or drugs can be successfully managed by identifying its early symptoms. Dengue fever, headache, body pain, dengue rashes, abdominal pain, restlessness, continuous vomiting and sudden reduction in temperature are its symptoms. Best method is to avoid mosquito bite. Treatment is possible if diagnosis occur before person suffers from dengue shock syndrome (DSS) and hemorrhagic fever (DHF). When following symptoms arises patient needs to be hospitalized.
- Bleeding from mouth and nose
- Damage to blood vessels
- Black colored vomit
- Heavy bleeding
- Fast drop in blood pressure
- Intense stomach pain
Mild form cure: During early stage, drinking plenty of water especially boiled water. Painkiller like paracitamol can lower fever, papaya leaves extracts, kiwi, coconut water can help a lot.
Treatment of severe dengue [DHF/DSS]: If dengue symptoms last from a long time, person needs to be hospitalised. Tests available for diagnosis of Dengue fever and infection are as below:
- Haemagglutination-Inhibition (HI)
- Complement fixation (CF)
- Neutralization test (NT)
- MAC-ELISA
- Indirect IgG ELISA
From above methods most popular method is MAC-ELISA and is widely used these days.
Treatment of Dengue fever: This fever treatment steps are listed below:
- Bed rest is recommended till recovery
- As temperature increases cold sponging is recommended
- Anti Pyretics is used to lower body temperature. Avoid aspirin and ibuprofen as it causes gastritis, vomiting and platelets dis-functioning.
- Paracitamol dose is given according to age, from 1 to 2 years: 60-120 mg/doses, 3 to 6 years: 120 mg/d and from 7 to 12: 240 mg/d. Adults are given 500 mg/ dose.
- Oral fluids and electrolyte therapy are recommended for patient with excessive sweating and vomiting.
- Monitoring of patients in academic area after treatment.
Treatment of DHF (dengue hemorrhagic fever)
In some cases, mild fever or dengue fever if not recovered till 7th day transforms into life threating dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) resulting in various symptoms like bleeding, low level of platelets count (thrombocytopenial) and blood plasma leakage and if an abrupt blood pressure drops, risk of dengue shock syndrome occurs.
Treatments:
- Body must be hydrated with intravenous fluids. These are received through intravenous fluids. These are received through blood streams. It is a thin tube inserted into your vein fluid contains water with electrolytes, sugar, medication (drugs) added in concentration. Crystalloids and colloids are used to replace lost fluid.
- Crystalloids, are aqueous solution of mineral salts and water soluble molecules, whereas colloids contains insoluble molecules like gelation, dextran’s and starches.
- Electrolyte therapy: Given when potassium loss takes place inside body.
- Blood Transfusion: Transfer of blood from one person to another person. Done when severe bleeding occurs or blood counts drops abruptly.
- Oxygen therapy and monitoring of blood pressure.
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Treatment of DSS: If along with DHF, narrow pulse pressure (less than 20mm Hg) occurs, DHF gets transformed into DSS. Generally DHF/ DSS occur in infants and elderly people. Shock can develop rapidly hence transferring the patient to ICU is recommended. Pulse, blood pressure and respiration must be monitored. Continuous oxygen should be given by face mask. Paracitamol can be given to lower body temperature. Fluid recitation is most effective treatment.
General precautions during dengue
As a concluding part of Dengue fever, I am suggesting some tips and precautions. Before reading ahead please keep in mind, “Prevention is better than cure.”
Some precautions for Dengue fever:
- Best precautions would be avoiding mosquito bite especially during morning and evening.
- Keep rooms, houses and make environment clean and safe.
- Look at your colors, water tanks and clean then if they are dirty. As water is an important aspect of life.
- Do not store water.
- Cover all containers properly.
- Take some precautions to prevent dengue mosquito breeding near you like replacing flower base water in a week can do it.
- Use mosquito repellents to avoid mosquito bite.
- Use mosquito net while sleeping at night.
These general precautions for Dengue fever may help you to live a safe and healthy life and prevent you from dangerous affects.
Conclusion: Dengue infection is caused by mosquito bite. This infectious disease is spread all over the world and become a global public health issue. Dengue fever is difficult to diagnose, so in this blog I have explained some dengue symptoms, prevention, cure and precautions. Keep in mind these points so that if you will face ever Dengue infection in your life you can handle it easily. It may be helpful to you to save your or someone else’s life. Its proper care and treatment via antiviral drugs are still under investigation. Hope you will like this blog and it is helpful to you somehow. In last words I only want to say that prevention is better than cure. So always try to apply these precautions to live healthy. If you found dengue symptoms, try to check under proper medical vision.
