Dengue haemorrhagic fever in Taiwan

Jien Wei Liu, Boon Siang Khor, Chen Hsiang Lee, Ing Kit Lee, Rong Fu Chen, Kuender D. Yang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

A large outbreak of dengue fever occurred in Taiwan during 2001. There were more than 5,000 cases with dengue infections. Out of these, 120 patients were diagnosed as cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and admitted to the medical centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This epidemic was caused by dengue virus DEN-2, following a previous large DEN-1 outbreak without the occurrence of DHF cases in the same areas, between 1987 and 1988. This observation provides an epidemiological evidence for the existence of the heterotypic secondary immune enhancement of DHF infections. In contrast to the predominance of paediatric patients with DHF in South-East Asia, all the patients with DHF in this series were adults, except for one patient who was 17 years old. The reason for the age difference in epidemics in different geographical locations is not clear. It might result from the differences in race and/or the virulence of the virus strains. It was also found that certain abnormal laboratory findings, including aytpical lymphocytosis (56.3%), activated partial thromboplastin time prolongation (APTT) (97.5%), aspartate aminotransferase (94.9%), and alanine aminotransferase (80.7%), were significantly higher in patient with DHF than those with DF. The fact that patients with DHF had a significantly higher APTT but not prothrombin time (PT) suggests that vascular insults and not hepatic insufficiency contribute to patients with DHF. Further studies are needed to explore whether abnormal APTT can be a good predictor for early diagnosis of DHF.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)19-24
Number of pages6
JournalDengue Bulletin
Volume27
StatePublished - 12 2003
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Activated partial thromboplastin time prolongation (APTT)
  • DEN-2
  • DF/DHF
  • Taiwan

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