Veronica de Franca Diniz Rocha
General Hospital Roberto Santos, Brazil
Keynote: Virol Mycol
We report the presence of chikungunya (CHIKV) RNA in the blood, urine and semen during the acute phase of the disease in an adult with a dual infection with Dengue virus type 3. In this study a patient, 25 year old man from Salvador, Brazil was considered. He was reported with 6-day duration of high fever, arthralgia, myalgia, headache and photophobia. Blood and semen specimens were positive for CHIKV in the first collected samples; semen and urine specimens were positive for CHIKV after 30 days of symptoms onset. DENV-3 RNA was positive in blood specimen when first collected 6 days after the initiation of symptoms. We describe for the first time the presence of CHIKV RNA in urine and semen for an extended period of time and we address the possible implications of these findings for diagnosis and transmission dynamics.
Verônica de França Diniz Rocha has completed her MD from Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro. She has performed research for one year on Infectious Diseases at the Universidade Federal da Bahia and another 3 years at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She is experience in Tropical Medicine at the Maputo Central Hospital, Mozambique in 2014. Currently, she is a member of the Arboviruses Research Group with Dr. Antonio Carlos Bandeira and Gubio Soares from the Virology Laboratory of the Universidade Federal da Bahia. The group is composed of infectious diseases specialists and biologists in arboviruses with publications on the subject. She works as an Infectious Disease Specialist at Hospital Geral Roberto Santos in Bahia.
