Clinical and seasonal pattern of dengue: Persistent hyper-endemicity of a vector borne disease from Southern-West Coastal India

Abstract

Background: Dengue is an emerging global viral disease with an increase 30-fold in incidence in the past fifty years. In the past decade it was restricted to only few a states of South and Northern India but in the recent past it has affected almost all the states in India. The objective of this study was to assess the clinical profile, trends and outcome of dengue cases. Methods: This retrospective record based cross-sectional study was conducted in tertiary hospitals, Mangaluru in Southern India. The study population included all clinical dengue positive cases over a period of five years. Information from pre-recorded case sheets were used for data collection. The data collected was entered and analyzed in SPSS Version 20. Results were expressed in percentages, means and graphs. Results: The study included 401 dengue cases. Most cases were in the age range of 20-40 years with a male to female ratio of 3:2. Overall seropositivity rate was 23.94% with High IgM prevalence. Monthly distribution showed a maximum incidence in the months of June and July and minimum incidence in January and February. Among the study participants, 91.5% of patients recovered completely and 1.7% of patients had died. 8.7% of patients were discharged against medical advice. Conclusions: Dengue continues to be major public health problem which indirectly hints towards the hyper endemic nature of this disease in this part of the globe affecting mainly the working age group. Low seropositivity with High IgM prevalence makes dengue an important differential for febrile illness of vague nature and invokes the need for robust public health response to curb the hyper-endemicity.