Higher risk of long-term health complications for dengue patients than COVID-19 patients post-recovery, Singapore study finds

Image: The Singapore study was led by Assistant Professor Lim Jue Tao, Infectious Disease Modelling at NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.

People who caught dengue and recovered are more likely to face long-term health complications about a year later compared to those who contracted COVID-19, according to the findings of a nationwide study led by NTU Singapore. 

Specifically, those who caught dengue have a 55 per cent higher risk of heart complications, such as irregular heartbeats, heart disease, and blood clots, compared with those who fell sick with COVID-19 and recovered. 

Based on tests and medical claim records of 11,707 residents in Singapore with dengue and 1,248,326 who had COVID-19 (Delta and Omicron variant) between July 2021 and October 2022, the study looked for newly arising health problems related to the heart, neurological and immune system that appeared 31 to 300 days after the infection. The research team said that the circulation of dengue and COVID-19 in the study period provided a unique opportunity for comparison.

The study, published in the Journal of Travel Medicine in July 2024, is the first to examine the long-term risk of multiple health complications following dengue and the first to contrast the post-recovery risk of dengue and COVID-19 patients.  

The study was carried out by researchers from NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), Ministry of Health, Singapore, Singapore General Hospital, and National Centre for Infectious Diseases, Singapore and the National Environment Agency.

Lead author of the study, Assistant Professor Lim Jue Tao, Infectious Disease Modelling at LKCMedicine, said, “We were motivated to conduct the study due to the increasing geographic range of dengue due to climate change. Dengue is one of the most common vector-borne diseases globally, and long-term health issues resulting from dengue can substantially increase the healthcare burdens of the infected person and the country. We also decided to compare the results against those who recovered from COVID-19 as our previous work had suggested increased risk of similar long-term health complications. Overall, our study underscores the need for people to guard against dengue in their environment and can be a resource to support public health planning.”