Europe: 1st imported Oropouche fever case confirmed in Italy
The Department of Infectious, Tropical and Microbiology Diseases of the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria in Negrar has diagnosed the first case in Europe of Oropouche fever related to the 2024 pandemic, in a patient with a recent history of travel to the tropical Caribbean region.
The case has already been reported to the health authorities and the local health authority of the Veneto Region, Italy as well as to the international information and monitoring services.
“Oropouche fever is one of the most widespread arboviruses in South America, with over 500,000 cases diagnosed from 1955 to today, a number that is probably underestimated given the limited diagnostic resources available in the area of diffusion – explains Federico Giovanni Gobbi, director of the Department of Infectious, Tropical Diseases and Microbiology of the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria of Negrare associate professor at the University of Brescia -. From the latest epidemiological update, between the end of 2023 and 2024, there were more than 5,000 cases of Oropouche fever in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, and recently also in Cuba.
The symptoms of Oropouche fever usually appear after 3-8 days from the bite of the vector insect, and are largely comparable to those of other tropical viral fevers such as dengue, Zika or chikungunya: high fever (over 39 °C) accompanied by headache, retrorbital pain, general malaise, myalgia, arthralgia, nausea, vomiting and photophobia. Sporadic cases of central nervous system involvement, such as meningitis and encephalitis, have also been recorded. In approximately 60% of cases, after the first acute phase, the symptoms recur, in a less severe form: usually within two to ten days, but also after a month from the first appearance"
“Oropouche fever is caused by the virus of the same name (OROV), discovered in 1955 in the blood of a forestry worker from Trinidad and Tobago – continues Concetta Castilletti , head of the Virology and Emerging Pathogens Unit of the IRCCS of Negrar -. It is a virus normally spread in the Amazon region, but what is more relevant is that it is a virus that is transmitted to humans by the bites of insects, in particular midges and mosquitoes."
“Arboviruses such as Oropouche fever, or such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya, constitute one of the public health emergencies with which we must get used to living. Climate changes and the increase in the movement of human populations risk making viruses once confined to the tropical belt endemic in our latitudes too. It is essential to always be prepared to respond to the emergency of pathogens that are not usually widespread in the Mediterranean area, and in this respect, having managed to isolate the OROV virus in our laboratory provides us with an additional weapon to refine diagnostics and research" .
“The diagnosis of Oropouche fever carried out by the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria – concludes Gobbi – confirms the importance of having specialized facilities, capable of constantly monitoring the progress of arbovirosis and other transmissible diseases. The dual specialization of our IRCCS in infectious and tropical diseases, and the fact that a traveler's medicine service has been present at our hospital for over thirty years, put us in a position to be able to promptly identify the emergency of potential risks of public health, which in this way can be managed early on thanks to the consolidated collaboration with the health authorities of the province of Verona and the Veneto Region".