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Medical Author:

Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD

Charles Patrick Davis, MD, PhD

Dr. Charles "Pat" Davis, MD, PhD, is a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor who currently practices as a consultant and staff member for hospitals. He has a PhD in Microbiology (UT at Austin), and the MD (Univ. Texas Medical Branch, Galveston). He is a Clinical Professor (retired) in the Division of Emergency Medicine, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, and has been the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UT Medical Branch and at UTHSCSA with over 250 publications.

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Medical Editor:

Mary Nettleman, MD, MS, MACP

Mary Nettleman, MD, MS, MACP

Mary D. Nettleman, MD, MS, MACP is the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Michigan State University. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt Medical School, and completed her residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Indiana University.

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For the large majority of people infected with dengue fever viruses, the prognosis is excellent, although they are likely to feel very ill during the first one or two weeks of the acute illness and weak for about one month. Patients with underlying illness or immune depression have a fair to good prognosis because they are more likely to get complications. Also, people who have been infected by one dengue viral serovar are still able to be infected by the remaining three serovars; a second infection increases the possibility that complications will develop so patients with second-time dengue fever have a less optimal prognosis. Patients who develop DHF or DSS have a range of outcomes from good to poor, depending on their underlying medical problems and how quickly supportive measures are given. For example, DHF and DSS have about 50% fatality rate if untreated but about a 3% rate if treated with supportive measures. Overall, the fatality rate is about 1% of all dengue fever infections. While this rate may seem low, worldwide it means that about 500,000 to 1 million people die each year from dengue fever. This is a concern since the worldwide case numbers and outbreaks are increasing.

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