How Dengue Could be Diagnosed?

We already learned about Dengue in our earlier post, If not please refer our Article “What is Dengue? Is it Life-Threatening Disease?”

Dengue is asymptomatic in most of the cases i.e., 80% of people suffering from Dengue fever doesn’t show any symptoms, however they may appear few days later.

There are few Physical Signs and Symptoms with which Dengue fever could be diagnosed, they are:

• Fever – Body temperature will go high and it won’t get reduced with normal antibiotics and antipyretics. The person may feel relaxed when treated with analgesics and antipyretics, however high fever recurs soon after the activity of the tablets.
• Muscle and Joint Pains – Pain will be enormous in all body parts, preferably most affected parts are Muscles and Joints. Pain killers (Analgesics) provide relief temporarily, as soon as the activity of analgesics get completed, pain will restore.
• Headache – The person suffering from Dengue will face tremendous Headache. Pain killers will provide temporary relief from it, however it restores.

• Nausea and Vomiting – Few people will have vomiting sensation during Dengue fever. This won’t be seen in majority of cases. Depending on this, treatment should be given.
• Skin Rash – Seen after few days of Virus transmission into the human body through mosquito bite. Skin will become red with white blurry patches in the middle areas.
• Low Platelets Count – Platelets count will fall down drastically which ultimately leads to bleeding from gums, nose and from any injured body parts.

The other means with which Dengue could be diagnosed are Laboratory Tests. There are tests for accurate diagnosis of Dengue, however they are costly. Few tests could be performed for early detection of Dengue virus in Human body. They are:

• Complete Blood Count (CBC) or Platelets Count: CBC provides complete details of Blood including RBC count, WBC count and Platelets Count. As platelets count fall down in Dengue, this test plays vital role in Dengue confirmation. Moreover this test is cheap when compared to others.
• Virus Isolation in Cell Cultures: The virus is isolated in cell culture in which they were grown under controlled conditions. Finally they were determined with their shapes.
• Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) by PCR: NAT is a molecular technique to detect particular pathogen (virus or bacteria) in the specimen of blood or tissue or body fluid. The mechanism involved is detecting and amplifying the RNA or DNA of pathogen which makes extra copies of nucleic acids.

•  NS1 Antigen Test: Non-Structural Protein 1 Antigen Test is used for detection of Dengue. It allows rapid detection on the first day of the fever before antibodies appear. The method of detection is through Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay.
• Specific Antibodies Test: The specimen of blood is examined for the presence of any specific antibodies which confirm the occurrence of Dengue fever.

Virus Isolation and Nucleic Acid Detection tests are more accurate when compared to all other tests, however they were not widely used due to greater cost.

Don’t forget to Read – How Dengue Fever affects the Human Body?