Needle-stick dengue virus infection in a health-care worker at a Japanese hospital

Abstract

Objectives: About 160 patients in Japan were infected with dengue virus by mosquito's bites in the summer and autumn of 2014. In this report, I describe a case of occupational dengue virus infection by needle-stick injury from the 1990s to alert health-care workers to the fact that dengue virus is among the causative agents responsible for occupational infectious disease even in Japan. Case: A Japanese female in her thirties, a nurse at our hospital in Tokyo, was admitted to our hospital in January 1992 three days after the onset of fever, headache, and general malaise. She had never been overseas. Five days before the onset of her symptoms, she had pricked her finger with an injection needle used to draw blood from a febrile patient infected with dengue virus. She was diagnosed with dengue virus infection based on three findings: detection of the dengue virus genome in serum, isolation of dengue virus from serum, and serum samples positive for IgM antibodies against dengue virus. Conclusions: The patient contracted dengue virus infection via a needle-stick injury at our hospital. Although this occurred more than two decades ago, in 1992, health-care workers should still be mindful of the risk of dengue virus infection via needle-stick injury even in Japan.