[Clinical and epidemiological characteristic of dengue]

To describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of dengue fever (DF) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF).

A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Hospital General de Culiacan Dr. Bernardo J. Gastélum and the Hospital General de Zona 28 of IMSS from September to November 2003, with patients having dengue diagnosis, which was classified according to the WHO criteria. The statistical program Stata v6 was used for the analysis.

231 dengue cases (DF: 90.48 %; DHF 9.52 %) were included. Average age was 34.5 +/- 15 years. 61.7% of DF cases were women, while 77.3% of DHF cases were men. DHF cases went to the hospital in 4.7 +/- 2 days, while DF cases went in 3.4 +/- 2.2 days (p = 0.004). DHF cases had more often headache, retroocular pain, arthralgias, diarrhea and vomiting (p < 0.05). DF cases showed hemorrhagic manifestations (24.8%); plasma leakage (6.7%) and thrombocytopenia (34.4%); petequiae, gingival bleeding and epistaxis were associated to thrombocytopenia below 39 000/mm(3) (p < 0.05); neutropenia, prolonged partial thromboplastin time elevated transaminases were observed more often in DHF cases (p <0.05).

the main variables associated with DHF were: male gender, fever, vomiting and gingival bleeding but not previous history of dengue; the major hemoconcentration, the major severity of thrombocytopenia.