Clinical characteristics of 277 cases with dengue fever in Guangzhou during an epidemic of 2006 / 中华全科医师杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients with dengue fever(DF)in Guangzhou from July to September in 2006 and to improve the awareness of dengue virus infection for physicians.Methods Clinical data of 277 patients with DF admitted to our hospital in Guangzhou were retrospectively analyzed.Dengue virus was isolated from patients' blood specimens by C6/36 cell culture and typed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR)assay and gene sequencing.Results Age of the 277 patients,148 males and 129 females,averaged 36 years with a standard deviation of 17 years,ranging from 9 months to 78 years.Their most common symptoms included fever(100.0%),skin rash(85.2%),headache(69.3%),myalgia(51.3%),bone soreness (39.0%)and nausea or vomiting(39.4%),and leucopenia and/hromboeytopenia occurred in 75.5% and 62.5% of them,respectively.Elevated alanine aminotransferase(ALT)was found in 59.6%,elevated aspartate aminotransferase(AST)in 81.6%,and hypopotassemia in 53.8% of them.Serum positivity of antibody against dengue virus IgM was 90.6%,which could be detected 3 to 10 days after onset of the illness,with a mean of 6.2 days with a standard deviation of 1.9 days.Cell-cultured virus from 20 patients were identified as typed by RT-PCR and RNA sequence analyses.All patients were clinically classified as typical DF and all of them completely recovered.Conclusions DF during this epidemic in Guangzhou was caused by dengue virus-1,with typical manifestations in all the patients but more damage in the liver.Some patients demonstrated hypopotassemia,but no dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome was found.All the patients experienced a good prognosis with timely diagnosis and treatment.