Thursday, February 20, 2025

Dengue in Puerto Rico

update: CDC report of last year's dengue outbreak in PuertoRico. 

During 2024, Puerto Rico reported 6,291 dengue cases and surpassed the epidemic threshold, prompting declaration of a local public health emergency. Approximately one half of patients (52.3%) were hospitalized, 264 (4.2%) had severe dengue cases, and 11 (0.2%) persons died. Persons aged 10–19 years accounted for 28.4% of severe cases. Since most cases have few symptoms or might not be sick enough to see a physician.


the rest is about treatment (supportive,, including fluids) and mosquito control, things that have been used for a century.

So is there any treatment for Dengue? No medicines?

2018 article suggests ivermectin might help but it was a poor study and the errors of the paper corrected here. 

(note a recent article reported hundreds of papers were recently removed from publication because of flaws)

this study showed some lab improvements but wasn't conclusive.

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/10/e594/5943555?login=false

problem? Anti virals have to be given early to work, and the vague symptoms might not be enough to see a physician that early.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8544673/

about possible anti viral medicine: problem: Hard to prove they work


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