Asymptomatic Dengue infections significantly contribute to disease transmission

Written By : Dr.Niharika Harsha B |Medically Reviewed By : Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli Published On 2023-08-16T09:45:56+05:30 | Updated On 16 Aug 2023 12:18 PM IST

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Understanding asymptomatic dengue infections is essential for treating dengue fever as asymptomatic carriers play a vital role in spreading the infection as per a new study. Knowing the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers helps to levy the necessary control measures in health care centers at various levels.

The study results were published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

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Dengue infection, caused by DENV-infected female Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, is clinically classified as either dengue with/without warning signs or severe dengue. It is a major public health concern. Asymptomatic dengue constitutes three-quarters of estimated DENV infections each year. Literature shows that asymptomatic infections are about 80% as infectious to mosquitoes as symptomatic dengue cases and about 88% of infections result from asymptomatic individuals. Due to the lack of summarized information on the actual prevalence of asymptomatic dengue cases, researchers from the Indian Council of Medical Research conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the global prevalence of asymptomatic dengue infections.

Cross-sectional studies reporting the prevalence of asymptomatic dengue infections from PubMed, Scopus, and Embase were searched and analyzed. The prevalence of asymptomatic dengue infections was pooled and reported as proportions with a 95% confidence interval (CI).

Results:

There were about 41 studies with 131,953 cases in the analysis.
The overall pooled prevalence of asymptomatic dengue infections was 59.26%, with 65.52% during outbreaks and 30.78% during non-outbreak periods.
The pooled prevalence among the acutely infected individuals was 54.52%, whereas, among primary and secondary asymptomatic dengue infections, it was 65.36% and 48.99%, respectively.
Thus, a pooled prevalence of asymptomatic dengue was 59.26% due to the elective up/down-regulation of host defense response genes.

Take-home points:

Nearly half of the individuals had asymptomatic dengue infections, especially during outbreak periods.
Asymptomatic infections were high during primary dengue infections and among blood donors.

BDS, MDS

Dr.Niharika Harsha B (BDS,MDS) completed her BDS from Govt Dental College, Hyderabad and MDS from Dr.NTR University of health sciences(Now Kaloji Rao University). She has 4 years of private dental practice and worked for 2 years as Consultant Oral Radiologist at a Dental Imaging Centre in Hyderabad. She worked as Research Assistant and scientific writer in the development of Oral Anti cancer screening device with her seniors. She has a deep intriguing wish in writing highly engaging, captivating and informative medical content for a wider audience. She can be contacted at editorial@medicaldialogues.in.

Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli

Dr Kamal Kant Kohli-MBBS, DTCD- a chest specialist with more than 30 years of practice and a flair for writing clinical articles, Dr Kamal Kant Kohli joined Medical Dialogues as a Chief Editor of Medical News. Besides writing articles, as an editor, he proofreads and verifies all the medical content published on Medical Dialogues including those coming from journals, studies,medical conferences,guidelines etc. Email: drkohli@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751