Source: Thailand Medical News Nov 09, 2019 5 years, 5 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes ago
Health authorities in Spain confirmed on Friday a case of a man spreading
dengue through
sex, a world first for a virus which until recently was thought to be transmitted only by mosquitos.
The shocking case concerns a 41-year-old man from Madrid who contracted
dengue after having
sex with his male partner who picked up the virus from a mosquito bite during a trip to Cuba, said Dr Susana Jimenez of the Madrid region's public health department.
The patient’s dengue infection was confirmed in September and it puzzled doctors because he had not travelled to a country where the disease, which causes severe flu-like symptoms such as high fever and body aches, is common, she added.
Dr Susana Jimenez told
Thailand Medical News "His partner presented the same symptoms as him but lighter around ten days earlier, and he had previously visited Cuba and the Dominican Republic. An analysis of their sperm was carried out and it revealed that not only did they have dengue but that it was exactly the same virus which circulates in Cuba."
Dr Susana Jimenez added, A "likely' case of sexual transmission of
dengue between a man and a woman was the subject of a recent scientific article in South Korea.”
The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors health and disease in Europe, said this was "to our knowledge, the first sexual transmission of the
dengue virus among men who have sex with men."
According to the World Health Organization's website,
dengue is transmitted mainly by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which thrives in densely-populated tropical climates and breeds in stagnant pools of water. It is most serious and deadly in children, especially young girls though scientists don't know why.
Dengue is most commonly caught by people travelling to hotter climates such as southeast Asia, Africa, Australia, the Caribbean and South and Central America.
Signs it could be transmissible through sex were first reported in a scientific journal last year.
The study, published in journal
Eurosurveillance, documented the case of an Italian man in his 50s who was diagnosed with
dengue fever after returning from Thailand.
He was otherwise healthy but suffered from joint pain, fatigue and nausea during the illness.
The man was admitted to the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome after feeling ill for nine days and was diagnosed with
dengue fever there.
He recovered and traces of the virus had disappeared from his blood and urine after 23 days, but it was still present in his semen after 37 days. All traces had disappeared from his body by day 55.
The discovery led scientists to think the virus could be transmitted by
sexual intercourse, in the same way the ZIKA virus is known to do.
There has been actually ot
her cases of similar incidences but unfortunately health authorities discounted the possibility and there were not enough studies and research done.
As
dengue is fast increasing globally and really becoming an epidemic of huge proportion, the fact that it can be transmitted by
sex and also the rise of possible mutations is now becoming a cause of major concern.
As food for thought,
Thailand Medical News wonders, what if an infected person with
HIV that also has Herpes, HPV, TB and even Flu and other infections was to contract
dengue, could the human body of that person be the perfect laboratory setting to create a new super deadly strain that could be spread by
sex, or mosquitoes (ie thru a insect bite ) etc?
Reference: Prolonged detection of dengue virus RNA in the semen of a man returning from Thailand to Italy, Eleonora Lalle1,2, Francesca Colavita1,2, Marco Iannetta1, Saba Gebremeskel Teklè1, Fabrizio Carletti1, Laura Scorzolini1, Licia Bordi1, Donatella Vincenti1, Concetta Castilletti1, Giuseppe Ippolito1, Maria Rosaria Capobianchi1, Emanuele Nicastri1 Eurosurveillance Euro Surveill. 2018;23(18):pii=18-00197. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2018.23.18.18-00197
