Abstract
BackgroundDengue and leptospirosis infections are currently two major endemics in Malaysia. Owing to the overlapping clinical symptoms between both the diseases, frequent misdiagnosis and confusion of treatment occurs. As a solution, the present work initiated a pilot study to investigate the incidence related to co-infection of leptospirosis among dengue patients. This enables the identification of more parameters to predict the occurrence of co-infection.MethodTwo hundred sixty eight serum specimens collected from patients that were diagnosed for dengue fever were confirmed for dengue virus serotyping by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Clinical, laboratory and demographic data were extracted from the hospital database to identify patients with confirmed leptospirosis infection among the dengue patients. Thus, frequency of co-infection was calculated and association of the dataset with dengue-leptospirosis co-infection was statistically determined.ResultsThe frequency of dengue co-infection with leptospirosis was 4.1%. Male has higher preponderance of developing the co-infection and end result of shock as clinical symptom is more likely present among co-infected cases. It is also noteworthy that, DENV 1 is the common dengue serotype among all cases identified as dengue-leptospirosis co-infection in this study.ConclusionThe increasing incidence of leptospirosis among dengue infected patients has posed the need to precisely identify the presence of co-infection for the betterment of treatment without mistakenly ruling out either one of them. Thus, anticipating the possible clinical symptoms and laboratory results of dengue-leptospirosis co-infection is essential.
Highlights
Dengue and leptospirosis infections are currently two major endemics in Malaysia
It is noteworthy that, DENV 1 is the common dengue serotype among all cases identified as dengueleptospirosis co-infection in this study
For those dengue patients that were suspected for leptospirosis, the hospital proceeded with further test, the immunoglobulin M (IgM) assay
Summary
Dengue and leptospirosis infections are currently two major endemics in Malaysia. Owing to the overlapping clinical symptoms between both the diseases, frequent misdiagnosis and confusion of treatment occurs. The present work initiated a pilot study to investigate the incidence related to co-infection of leptospirosis among dengue patients. This enables the identification of more parameters to predict the occurrence of co-infection. Suppiah et al Journal of Biomedical Science (2017) 24:40 from 0.9-8% [5,6,7] Both the infections generally present with a phase of acute febrile illness which includes the sudden onset of fever, headache, and myalgia [8]. Due to the overlapping clinical presentations between these two diseases, ability to diagnose them became more challenging especially with the presence of acute co-infection. It is very crucial to be able to distinguish leptospirosis from dengue as early commencement of antibiotic therapy in cases with leptospirosis leads to a more favorable outcome, while dengue can be treated symptomatically [9]
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