Cadernos de Saúde Pública
ISSN 1678-4464
34 nº.9
Rio de Janeiro, Setembro 2018
CARTA
Zika: heterogeneidade e história
Beuy Joob, Viroj Wiwanitkit
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-311X00118618
Dear Editors, we read the publication Signifying Zika: Heterogeneity in the Representations of the Virus by History Of Infection with a great interest 1. Guedes et al. 1 concluded that “personal experience seems to shape the social representation of the disease, increasing the focus on its proximate consequences”. There are some issues regarding this report. First, Guedes et al. 1 used interviews to collect data regarding the previous history of having “any disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito”. This might not result in accurate data since several acute febrile illness share the same clinical problem and the mis- or underdiagnosis of vector-borne diseases by the Aedes aegypti mosquito might be possible. In addition, the Zika virus disease has a high rate of asymptomatic infection 2, which might not be perceived in the infected cases. In our area, Indochina, previous report showed a high rate of asymptomatic infections among local people and there was no previous concern on having the disease among local people 3. There is a wide clinical spectrum of Zika virus infection 4 and there might be several representations without a specific pattern.
References
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