Bengaluru: Dengue fever, which has gripped the city, is causing further panic among patients with a variety of mucocutaneous manifestations.
The typical clinical manifestations of dengue range from self-limited dengue fever (DF) to dengue hemorrhagic fever with shock syndrome.
“There are various sub types of dengue and sadly we cannot identify all of them. But, there are so many different presentation which causes confusion among patients and hence we try to explain the manifestation very clearly to them,” said Dr Shankar V., MD (Internal Medicine) Manipal Hospital Malleswaram and Apollo hospital Sheshadripuram, who has treated more than thousands dengue patients this season.
He recently treated an NS1 positive (NS1 stands for nonstructural protein 1) patient with a very low platelet count, who also had pneumonia and fluid retention.
“Dengue virus is the causative agent of dengue fever (DF) and dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS) and consists of four distinct serotypes (DENV 1–4),” explained Dr Kala Yadhav M.L., a Microbiology professor at Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI). Sadly the stereotype two has high virulence and the manifestations are hemorrhagic fever and patients can go into shock as well, he added.
All dengue serotypes are capable of causing disease with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from fever in a mild clinical form classically known as dengue fever (DF) to the severe clinical and potentially fatal dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS). “Patients with either DHF or DSS have fever, hemorrhagic manifestations along with thrombocytopenia and hemoconcentration,” explained Dr Shankar.
Also, the National Institute of Virology conducted a sample study which revealed that type 2 strain of dengue is more prevalent.
“The tests carried out at NIV are just 20 per cent of the total number of dengue cases and hence we cannot be sure, but type two cases are more common in the city,” said Dr Bhaskar Shenoy, Consultant at Manipal Hospital.
