People who are struck by Zika virus after recovering from Dengue have no more severe effects than the people with Zika who never had dengue, a recent research has concluded. A previous research using only cells and rodents indicated that before dengue infection would exaggerate Zika disease by helping replication of virus. But the new research has shunned the older report.
"Our results show this aggravation doesn't occur, or occurs only very rarely and can't be detected by a study such as this," said virologist Maurício Lacerda Nogueira, Professor at the Sao Jose do Rio Preto Medical School (FAMERP) and principal investigator for the study.
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The conclusions were published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. They are the first to show that before dengue infection in human beings infected by Zika doesn’t essentially lead to worse illness. During the time when the ZIka epidemic was at its peak, between January to July 2016, Nogueira's team collected the blood samples from 65 people who showed fever and symptoms of dengue or Zika at the emergency unit of the reference hospital in Sao Jose do Rio Preto, a healthcare organisation for northern and northwestern Sao Paulo.
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The study of the viral genetic data found in these blood samples demonstrate 45 patients had been infected by Zika and 20 by dengue. The tests also concluded that 78% of those with Zika and 70% of those with dengue had been infected by dengue virus before as well.
Shortly after the Zika epidemic emerged, it began to be suspected that prior infection by dengue could lead to more severe clinical manifestations of Zika, similar to those of dengue hemorrhagic fever, such as bleeding under the skin, a large decrease in blood pressure and even shock in particularly severe cases.
If dengue virus smoothened the progress of Zika virus, then the number should be much higher in the former group, but the researchers found both groups had comparable viral density.
(With IANS Inputs)
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