First case of oropouche fever in Europe: it was diagnosed by the department of Infectious, Tropical and Microbiology Diseases of the Irccs Sacro Cuore Don Calabria of Negrar, in the province of Verona. This is a patient with a recent history of travel to the tropical Caribbean region.
“Oropouche fever is caused by the virus of the same name (orov), discovered in 1955 in the blood of a forestry worker from Trinidad and Tobago – he explained Federico Giovanni Gobbi, director of the department of Infectious, Tropical and Microbiology Diseases of the Sacred Heart Don Calabria of Negrar -. This is a virus normally spread in the Amazon region, but what is more relevant is that it is a virus that is transmitted to humans by insect bites, in particular midges and mosquitoes”.
The expert underlined that “from the latest epidemiological update, between the end of 2023 and 2024, there were more than 5,000 cases of oropouche fever in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, and recently also in Cuba”. As regards the symptoms, however, “they usually appear 3-8 days after the bite of the vector insect – explained the virologist Concetta Castilletti – and are largely comparable to those of other tropical viral fevers such as dengue, zika or chikungunya: high fever (over 39 degrees) accompanied by headache, retrorbital pain, general malaise, myalgia, arthralgia, nausea, vomiting and photophobia. Sporadic cases of central nervous system involvement, such as meningitis and encephalitis, have also been recorded. There are currently no specific treatments or vaccines for this virus. Patients are recommended to rest and medical monitoring.
On the website of the Ministry of Health we read that the virus is transmitted to people mainly through the bite of midge Culicoides paraensis. So far, no cases of direct human-to-human transmission of the virus have emerged.
