Predominant symptoms in hospitalized adult patients with dengue: a descriptive literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Dengue remains one of the arboviral diseases with the greatest public health impact and presents a broad clinical spectrum, ranging from self-limited febrile illness to severe forms requiring hospitalization. In adults, clinical expression may be heterogeneous and hinder timely case recognition, especially during outbreaks or in high-demand care settings.

Objective: To describe the predominant symptoms reported in hospitalized adult patients with a dengue diagnosis based on nine Spanish-language studies included in this review.

Materials and methods: A descriptive literature review was conducted. The search included Spanish-language articles located in SciELO and Google Scholar. Studies of hospitalized patients diagnosed with dengue that reported clinical manifestations were considered, and works focused on pediatric populations were excluded. Nine articles were selected, from which country, institution, population assessed, sex predominance, and main clinical symptoms were extracted.

Results: The nine included studies came from Cuba, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, and Honduras. Female sex predominated in most series. Fever was the most consistent finding and appeared in 100% of cases in several studies, although one Paraguayan series reported it in 84% and another in 87.38%. Headache showed frequencies ranging from 52% to 88.9%. Myalgias ranged from 60.2% to 89.9%, while retro-ocular or retro-orbital pain was observed in approximately 63% to 72.6%. Arthralgias, asthenia, anorexia, rash, nausea, vomiting, dyspnea, and malaise were also described.

Conclusions: Fever was the predominant symptom in hospitalized adults with dengue, followed by headache, myalgias, and retro-ocular pain, in a context of clinical variability across series and countries that requires interpreting these findings as a descriptive synthesis rather than a uniform measure of frequency.