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 and cases
The virus that causes Oropouche fever was discovered in 1955, when it was first found in the blood of a Trinidad and Tobago forestry worker. “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.
How it is transmitted
Human-to-human transmission has never been documented. The virus is contracted through vector insect biteprimarily the Culicoides paraensis, a midge widespread in the American continent. We ask ourselves now if insects present in Italy can act as carriers.
What are the symptoms
According to the doctors of the Veronese institute, the symptoms of Oropouche fever consist of high fever (over 39 degrees), heachacheretrorbital pain, general malaisemyalgia, arthralgia, nausea, vomiting and photophobia. More rarely, it is possible that the central nervous system is affected, thus causing meningitis and cephalitis. And about the incubation time? “Symptoms usually occur after 3-8 days after the bite of the vector insect,” he explains Concetta Castillettihead of the Virology and Emerging Pathogens Unit.
In the 60% of cases, after a period ranging from two days to a month from the first acute phase, the symptoms return in a less severe form.
What does climate change have to do with it
“Arboviruses such as Oropouche fever, or such as dengue, Zika, Chikungunya constitute one of the public health emergencies with which we have to get used to living together – the experts of the Irccs of Negrar clarify – Climate changes and the increase in the movement of human populations risk making endemic even in our latitudes once confined viruses in the tropical belt”.
