Burden of dengue and chikungunya co-infection in a tertiary care hospital

In India, concurrent infection of CHIKV and DENV had been reported since 1964 from different States. Both diseases have some common signs and symptoms that include fever, rashes, joint pain, nausea, headache, and vomiting and even the risk factors are the same or similar. Our study was aimed to report the proportion of patients co-infected with DENV and CHIKV in one year and the association of co-infection with disease severity among patients. In our study, 14.57% samples were reactive for Dengue serology and 39.57% samples were positive for Chikungunya infection in clinically suspected cases while coinfection was found in 5.78% samples. Dual infection was more common in males (58.3%) compared to females (41.7%). Majority of cases were from the age group of <20 years (42.1%) followed by 21-40 years (40.8%). Our findings suggest that there is urgent need to differentiate dual infections from mono-infections since the clinical course is unlikely to follow routine pattern and management strategies would require tailoring accordingly.