Virulent Dengue Fever

Virulent Dengue Viruses

This is an in depth comparison between the 4 strains of Dengue Fever. The research documented here was designed to try to determine which strains are the most common, virulent and contagious, and their affects on humans. Dengue fever is the most common mosquito transmitted disease in humans and also potentially life threatening. With their being no current laboratory or animal models of this disease available for study, the pathology and growth of this disease has been hard to examine and therefore, hard to prevent. This summary focuses on results using human dendrite cells and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, and this viruses’ ability to replicate and infect others. Results from these studies implicate that the Southeast Asian genotypes’ characteristics are continuing to displace its’ sister strain, the American genotype.

Dengue fever is a blood-borne disease contracted and spread by being bitten by a mosquito infected with the Dengue virus. In the New World the most common family of mosquito infected with the Dengue Fever (DH) is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, creating over 100 million cases of dengue worldwide every year. (Center for Disease Control website) Of the DF virus there are four main strains, DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3, and DEN-4. Two of these strains are the DF, and two are the Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF), a more severe and possibly fatal form of this disease. DHF is caused by the same virus as DF but different in its symptoms and treatment.

There are 4 distinct antigenic types of the Dengue Fever (DF) of the Flaviviradiae family, infection and or exposure to more than one type increases the risk of developing the fatal form of this virus, Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, (DHF). The American genotype of this virus has remained a more docile and non-life threatening strain of this virus. The counterpart to this horrible virus is the Southeast Asian strain; know as Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, a much more virulent and life threatening disease. Strain and immunity of the host affect the severity of Dengue fevers’ intensity of harm to the body.

Of the four strains of dengue fever, I found a study completed by: Raymond Cologna, Philip M. Armstrong, and Rebeca Rico-Hesse studied 24 samples of DF serotype 2. This strain in particular proved the most effective to test on human dendrite cells (DC), only found in the blood. To begin this study the female Aedes aegypti mosquito was infected with the 2 types of this virus, the American and the Southeast Asian taken from rabbit blood. After being infected, the heads of the mosquitoes were