With climate change, more and more areas of Europe are becoming vulnerable to dengue. Emblematic of this phenomenon is the case of a British woman infected in September 2022 in the south of France, the protagonist of a study that was presented in recent days at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (Eccmid 2023, scheduled in Copenhagen from Saturday April 15 to Tuesday 18).
The viral disease is triggered by the bite of mosquitoes of the genus Aedes aegyptique – it seems to have turned into a lethal epidemic in Argentina in 2023, given that there are already 39 deaths, considered a historical record, and at least 41,257 cases. The latter are above those that have occurred in recent years, and in particular 48.4% more than in 2020, the year in which there were 26 deaths. The Infobae news portal indicates that the current 39 deaths are distributed in nine zones: province of Buenos Aires (1), city of Buenos Aires (2), Jujuy (6), Salta (10) , Santa Fe (7), Santiago del Estero (1), Tucumán (9), Entre Ríos (1) and Córdoba (2). It should be emphasized that sources from the Argentine Ministry of Health have indicated that the serotype 2-Cosmopolitan was detected in all the samples studied, which until now had not been circulating in Argentina, but in Brazil and Peru. It is a Denv-2 serotype native to Southeast Asia, which in the Latin American region was isolated for the first time in 2019, in Peru.
“Dengue is scary in South America. In Argentina” have been recorded “over 40 thousand cases and 39 deaths since the beginning of the year. The Cosmopolitan serotype, typical of South-East Asia, has spread to America” and is “much faster in spreading, more aggressive and even more deadly” underlines Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino polyclinic in Genoa . “Dengue, also called bone-crushing fever, is unfortunately also spreading in Europe with autochthonous cases in the south of France. Another infectious problem multiplied by globalization and global warming”. Two cases have been recorded in Arezzo in recent days.
The English case was described as follows by British doctors: the patient, 44 years old, with no underlying pathologies, presented to an emergency room in the United Kingdom. She had a fever for 3 days, headache in the back of her eyes, body aches, and a widespread, blanching erythematous rash on her skin (which can occur with a range of infections). The woman had returned the day before the onset of symptoms from France, where she had been visiting her family near Nice. And she hadn’t traveled to any other country. Other family members were also unwell and had the same symptoms. A sample was urgently sent to the UK’s Rare Imported Pathogens Laboratory (Ripl) and confirmed acute dengue virus infection. The patient did not require medical attention and was monitored on an outpatient basis. This patient, explains study author Owain Donnelly of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, UK, “was part of an outbreak of more than 30 locally transmitted cases in southern France in 2022, which highlights the rapid evolution of dengue epidemiology. Surveillance and reporting mechanisms are important to ensure an accurate understanding of the spread” of the virus. “With climate change – he warns – in particular warmer temperatures and more rainfall, and the increase in global trade and tourism, we could see more parts of Europe with the right combination of factors for dengue epidemics”.
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