World's first sexually transmitted dengue case revealed in Madrid: Report

According to a report in El Pais, Madrid recorded one of the first cases of sexual transmission of dengue in the world.

A man was diagnosed with dengue at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital after having unprotected sex with another man during his recent trip to Cuba and the Caribbean.

It was confirmed by the Carlos III Health Institute National Center for Microbiology that the virus was dengue and was sexually transmitted. This is the first sexually confirmed injections in the world as the earlier case was in South Korea in the scientific literature.

“The patient arrived with a high fever, cutaneous erythema and intense pain,” explained Santiago Moreno, head of the infectious diseases department at Ramón y Cajal as reported by Outbreak News Today.

The confirmed diagnosis has raised questions about the origination of the infection which is wildly spread by the tiger mosquito – Aedes albopictus – which is found only near the Mediterranean coast in Spain which the patient hadn’t visited recently.

Dengue is usually diagnosed within four to ten days.

According to a spokesman from the General Directorate of Public Health of the Community of Madrid who took part in the investigation by carrying out entomological inspections which ruled out the presence of tiger mosquito in the residence and in other community places in Madrid visited by the patient.

Epidemiologist Susana Jiménez and biologist Andrés Irisio conducted genetic tests which revealed that “the virus strain found in the samples taken from the two patients is identical and coincides with the one currently circulating in Cuba,” as told to Outbreak News Today.