Extract

Treating Dengue More Difficult With Growing Obesity

3 December 2010 (Reuters Health [Tan Ee Lyn])—Experts warned Friday that treating dengue, a potentially fatal disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus, will become more difficult in the future as more people around the world become overweight and obese.

Dengue patients suffer from capillary permeability. “The complications are lots of fluids in the lungs which make breathing difficult. In people who have a high BMI (body mass index), their capillaries are intrinsically more likely to leak, so that is made worse in a dengue infection,” said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam. Dr. Farrar spoke to Reuters after addressing an infectious disease conference in Singapore.

Dengue used to be a disease primarily among young children, but almost anyone is now susceptible and infection numbers have shot up because of urbanization and the constant movement of people - conditions that allow the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the virus, to thrive.

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