Analysis on clinical and epidemiological characteristics of 1032 patients with Dengue fever in Guangzhou / 中华流行病学杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To analyze the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of Dengue fever (DF) during the Dengue-1 epidemic in Guangzhou.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Clinical and epidemiological data of 1032 patients with DF from May 2002 to November 2003 were retrospectively analyzed. Dengue virus were isolated by cell culture and typed by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Age of the patients ranged from 55 days to 91 years old (average 34.7 +/- 13.2 years) with sex ratio 1.031. Incubation period ranged from 2 to 12 days with mean periods of 5.3 +/- 2.4 days. Most (45.0%) cases appeared in September and the epidemic last from July to November. Dengue outbreak had involved 675 cases in 26 common places. The common manifestations were seen as fever (100%), headache (90.9%), myalgia (68.4%), bone soreness (48.8%), fatigue (79.3%), skin rash (60.1%), positive tourniquet test (45.3%), leukopenia (63.3%) and thrombocytopenia (60.8%), respectively. Dengue virus was isolated from serum of 19 out of 54 patients' and identified as Dengue virus type 1. DNA sequence analyzes on rates of nucleotide homology were 97%, 97% and 98% compared with those of Dengue virus type 1 strain of DF outbreak in Cambodia, in 1997 and 1999 in China.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The epidemic of DF in Guangzhou in 2002/2003 was caused by Dengue virus type-1 with most patients showing classic type of the disease. Date suggested that change can happen from non-endemic to hypoendemic regions in Guangdong province.</p>