Abstract
Ten cases of chikungunya were diagnosed in Spanish travellers returning from Haiti (n=2), the Dominican Republic (n=7) or from both countries (n=1) between April and June 2014. These cases remind clinicians to consider chikungunya in European travellers presenting with febrile illness and arthralgia, who are returning from the Caribbean region and Central America, particularly from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The presence of Aedes albopictus together with viraemic patients could potentially lead to autochthonous transmission of chikungunya virus in southern Europe.
Highlights
CHIKV is an arbovirus of the genus Alphavirus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes [1].Clinical manifestations of chikungunyaThe disease caused by CHIKV has an incubation time that ranges from one to 12 days, with an average of two to four days [2] and clinical presentation has similarities with dengue fever
Chikungunya is characterised by fever, headache, rash and both acute and persistent arthralgia
Polyarthralgia is common in cases CHIKV infection and is the most disabling symptom [2]
Summary
CHIKV is an arbovirus of the genus Alphavirus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes (mainly Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus) [1]. Before 2013, CHIKV infections had not been detected in the Americas but in December of that year, the first confirmed autochthonous case of CHIKV was reported in the Caribbean, in Saint Martin [14]. Almost 800 confirmed cases of CHIKV infection have been reported from Saint Martin [15] and the virus has spread to the whole Caribbean. Following amplification and sequencing of the gene, basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) analysis revealed a 100% similarity index of the case’s sequence with sequences from strains recently identified in the British Virgin Islands (strain 99659; GenBank accession number: KJ451624) and Saint Martin The sequence was deposited in GenBank under accession number KM192348
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