The Usefulness of Clinical-Practice-Based Laboratory Data in Facilitating the Diagnosis of Dengue Illness

الملخص EN

Alertness to dengue and making a timely diagnosis is extremely important in the treatment of dengue and containment of dengue epidemics.

We evaluated the complementary role of clinical-practice-based laboratory data in facilitating suspicion/diagnosis of dengue.

One hundred overall dengue (57 dengue fever [DF] and 43 dengue hemorrhagic fever [DHF]) cases and another 100 nondengue cases (78 viral infections other than dengue, 6 bacterial sepsis, and 16 miscellaneous diseases) were analyzed.

We separately compared individual laboratory variables (platelet count [PC] , prothrombin time [PT], activated partial thromboplastin time [APTT], alanine aminotransferase [ALT], and aspartate aminotransferase [AST]) and varied combined variables of DF and/or DHF cases with the corresponding ones of nondengue cases.

The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) in the diagnosis of DF and/or DHF were measured based on these laboratory variables.

While trade-off between sensitivity and specificity, and/or suboptimal PPV/NPV was found at measurements using these variables, prolonged APTT + normal PT + PC < 100 × 109 cells/L had a favorable sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV in diagnosis of DF and/or DHF.

In conclusion, these data suggested that prolonged APTT + normal PT + PC < 100 × 109 cells/L is useful in evaluating the likelihood of DF and/or DHF.