By Grace Chua
DENGUE victims here tend to be older than those in developing countries, so Singapore needs to figure out how to treat them, said a dengue specialist on Wednesday.
In many developing countries, where exposure to the mosquito-borne illness is greater, most people come down with it when they are children and clinical guidelines on treatment have thus been developed based on child data, said Associate Professor Leo Yee Sin of the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC).
In Asia, Singapore and Taiwan stand out for having successfully controlled mosquito breeding, and are at the forefront in drawing up treatment modes for older patients.
Prof Leo is leading a $25 million national study which began in 2008 and will continue until 2013. Besides addressing the issue of older patients, the study will also look into developing anti-dengue drugs and genome analysis, among other things.
Going by World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines developed in 1997, few people above 40 have caught what is considered a severe form of dengue called dengue haemorrhagic fever, in which fluid leaks out of blood vessels and sends the patient's blood pressure plunging.
In Singapore, however, 24 out of 28 adults who died of dengue between 2004 and 2008 were older than 45.
