Adriana Mulato

College Biology Lab

Merylanne Dexter

April 11, 2018

“Chikungunya and Dengue Virus Infections among United States Community Service Volunteers

Returning from the Dominican, Republic, 2014”

What is Chikungunya? Chikungunya is a virus that is passed to humans by “an infected Aedes

species mosquito”. The virus spreads quick, in a 4-month period about more than 370,000 cases

had been seen. The most common symptom when the virus is present is fever.

The reason to study Chikungunya is because people travel to places where it is happening and

when they come back to their hometown they might not know that they have the virus. Not

knowing that they have the virus is a problem because that’s how it begins to spread in different

places causing even more cases. It is important to be aware of the disease and symptoms to try to

catch it before passing it on to others.

The study was done by having participants volunteer in projects from about 4 to 13 weeks in the

Dominican Republic. They were split into groups and would arrive at “Miami International

Airport”. The participants had to give consent, if under 18, or assent, if over 18. The participants

were to make sure to write down their symptoms and if they were bit by mosquitos. The

researchers collected specimens from the participants to see if they had the virus.

After completing their research, they found that out of 102 participants that met their

requirements of travel time period, 43 had evidence of having the virus. 59 of the participants
mentioned having fever, but only 41 of them actually had the virus. On the table provided we can

see that even though some acquired more mosquito bites they did not have the virus.

After the research was completed, they came to the conclusion that the longer you stay in the

area where the virus is then the higher the risk of getting the virus. The environments they were

living in could also increase the risk of getting the virus.

There were limitations to the design of the study, one of them would be the way they would

report their symptoms. We can’t trust completely that the participants were honest about what

they wrote, maybe they thought they had the symptom but they didn’t. This could most likely be

why there were more people that wrote down they had fever but didn’t have the virus. Although

the participants were told to avoid getting mosquitos as much as they could by wearing some

type of repellent, it may alter the data since they were not all wearing the same type or putting it

on as directed.
Works Cited

“Chikungunya and Dengue Virus Infections among United States Community – PubMed-

NCBI”, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 14

Mar. 2016.