Verona, 14 June 2024 – The Department of Tropical Infectious Diseases ofIrccs Sacred Heart of Negrar (Vr) recorded the first European case of Oropouche fever, normally widespread in the Amazon region. The Local Health Authorities of the Veneto Region ei international monitoring services they were promptly alerted. The patient apparently recently traveled to the tropical Caribbean area.
The virus was isolated safely at the Department’s Bsl3 laboratory: an initial step to develop specific diagnostic tests and studies on the ability of species of mosquitoes and midges also widespread in Italy.
Origins
Oropouche fever was discovered in 1955: the virus that causes it was first found in the blood of a forestry worker from Trinidad and Tobago. “It is one of the most widespread arboviruses in South America, with over 500 thousand cases diagnosed from 1955 to today, a number probably underestimated given the limited diagnostic resources available in the area of diffusion”, warns Federico Giovanni Gobbi, director of the Department of Infectious, Tropical Diseases and Microbiology of the Irccs of Negrar”. According to the researcher, from the end of 2023 to 2024have been registered more than 5 thousand infections in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Cuba between the end of 2023 and 2024.
