Epidemiology: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

Dengue fever (DF) is the most serious mosquito-borne viral disease worldwide. It is an acute febrile illness caused by
Aedes aegypti mosquito bite. It is endemic in some cities of Saudi Arabia such as Jeddah and Makkah. A computerbased
literature search was conducted using relevant keywords to retrieve studies conducted in Saudi Arabia pertaining to
DF. Forty-five articles were identified initially. After screening for exclusion and retrieving full texts, a total of ten articles
were used for this review. Four studies were cross-sectional and three found a sero-prevalence ranging from 31.7% to 56.9%
either among clinically suspected cases or among patients visiting hospital for other reason. Evidence extracted from risk
factors and distribution studies showed that young males are commonly affected. Fever, vomiting, thrombocytopenia and
leucopoenia were the common features of the three studies related to clinical presentation of DF. One cross-sectional study
about educational program of DF showed a positive family history of DF, having literate mothers, and students’ age ≥17 were
the predictors of high knowledge score. However, paucity of population-based studies limits generalisability of such evidence.
Future studies in Saudi Arabia should focus upon extending DF on other cities in the Kingdom and more population based
epidemiological studies are needed for estimating the true burden and incidence of dengue in Saudi population, as currently
there are few epidemiological studies about dengue and are only limited to sero-prevalence among clinically suspected cases
and among hospital based patients.

Biography

Alaa Al haeli is working in Collage of Public Health and Health Informatics at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia