Epidemiology of deadly mosquito-borne disease studied in Thai children.(Brief Article)

2002 OCT 2 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Virologists with the U.S. military are studying the epidemiology of dengue viruses in young school children in Thailand. They recently reported initial findings in two articles in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

"Dengue viruses are a major cause of morbidity in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Knowledge about the epidemiology and host determinants of inapparent and severe dengue virus infections is limited," wrote T.P. Endy and colleagues, USA, Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease.

Endy et al. reported their "findings from the first three years of a prospective study of dengue virus transmission and disease severity conducted in a cohort of 2,119 elementary school children in northern Thailand.

"A total of 717,106 person-school days were observed from 1998 to 2000. The incidence of inapparent and of symptomatic dengue virus infection was 4.3% and 3.6% in 1998, 3.2% and 3.3% in 1999, and 1.4% and 0.8% in 2000, respectively.

"Symptomatic dengue virus infection was responsible for 3.2%, 7.1%, and 1.1% of acute-illness school absences in 1998, 1999, and 2000, respectively.

"The early symptom complex of acute dengue virus infection is protean and difficult to distinguish from other causes of febrile childhood illnesses," observed Endy and colleagues, who noted that their study results "illustrate the spatial and temporal diversity of dengue virus infection and the burden of dengue disease in schoolchildren in Thailand" (Epidemiology of inapparent and symptomatic acute dengue virus infection: A prospective study of primary school children in Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand. Am J Epidemiol, 2002;156(1):40-51).

In their second paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Endy and coauthors explained that "[d]engue virus occurs as four distinct serotypes, each of which causes epidemics throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the ...