A study published in the CMAJ examined the risk of stroke among patients with dengue.
Researchers gathered data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. They studied 13,787 patients with dengue newly diagnosed between 2000 and 2012. They matched the dengue patients to a control cohort of patients who did not have dengue by demographic characteristics and stroke-related comorbidities.
The study shows the overall incidence rate of stroke was 5.33 per 1000 person-years in the dengue cohort and 3.72 per 1000 person-years in the control cohort. The risk of stroke among patients with dengue was highest in the first two months after diagnosis.
"The effect of dengue on stroke may be acute rather than chronic," study authors noted.