Dengue Fever

 Illness due to a infection with a virus of the family Flaviviridae (Dengue viruses).
o Four dengue viruses (DENV-1 to DENV-4)
o Enveloped viruses
o (+) Single-stranded RNA virus
*There are a subset of five of viridae viruses known as the dengue viruses.
 Accounts for ~5% of “fever in the returned traveler” cases
*That means is that if there is a traveler to a perhaps exotic locale and they come back
to their home country and they have a fever dengue fever actually accounts for about
5% of those cases.

Tropical and Subtropical Climates

 Caribbean, South-East Asia

 Transmitted by bites from mosquitos

o Aedes aegypto
o Aedes albopticus

Pathogenesis
Once we actually become infected once a mosquito bites us in our skin the viruses
1. Fusion  with a host cell – might be some theories that there are the Langerhans cells
in our skin which is an immune cell. Whatever that host cell might be the dengue virus
fuses with that cell and enter the cell so how does it fuse with the cell. It’s actually
mediated by viral envelope E glycoprotein
 Viral envelope (E) glycoprotein important for infectivity  how the dengue virus
can attach to a host cell and enter that host cell.
 Bind to viral receptors (ex. Heparin sulfate)  located on the host cell.
2. Disassembly 