Dengue sexual transmission reported in Madrid

By NewsDesk @bactiman63

A young man in Madrid, Spain has been diagnosed with dengue fever contacted via sexual transmission, one of the first cases of sexual transmission of dengue in the world, according to an El Pais report (computer translated).

The Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid diagnosed the dengue case in the man who had unprotected sex with another man who had recently been in Cuba and the Caribbean.

The virus was confirmed by the Carlos III Health Institute National Center for Microbiology.

This is one of the first sexually confirmed infections in the world, as there are only references in the scientific literature of another similar case in South Korea.

“The patient arrived with a high fever, cutaneous erythema and intense pain,” explains Santiago Moreno, head of the infectious diseases department at Ramón y Cajal. The clinical suspicion was confirmed by the microbiology service of the Madrid hospital and opened new questions about the origin of the infection. The absence of trips to endemic areas added the fact that the tiger mosquito – Aedes albopictus – is not settled in the Community of Madrid, which does live in areas of Spain such as the Mediterranean coast, where it has acted as a vector in other cases native. The patient had not recently visited these areas. Dengue incubation period is usually between four and 10 days.

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The General Directorate of Public Health of the Community of Madrid also participated in the investigation, which carried out entomological inspections that ruled out “the presence of the tiger mosquito either in the residence or in any of the places in the Community of Madrid visited by the two cases, “according to a spokesman.

Genetic tests have shown that “the virus strain found in the samples taken from the two patients is identical and coincides with the one currently circulating in Cuba,” according to epidemiologist Susana Jiménez and biologist Andrés Irisio.



