Chikungunya Treatment and Prevention

Chikungunya is a viral disease spread by mosquitoes known as Aedes aegypti.

Chikungunya symptoms include severe and persistent joint pain, body rash, headache and fever. Initial symptoms of chikungunya are similar to dengue fever. Chikungunya is usually not life threatening, but the joint pain in chikungunya can last for a long time and full recovery may take months. Usually the patients of chikungunya get life long immunity from infection and hence re-infection is very rare. Chikungunya is also known as Chicken guinea, Chicken gunaya and Chickengunya. The presence of the word Chicken has also lead to a lot of misconceptions about the disease. Acute chikungunya fever typically lasts for a few days to a couple of weeks, but some patient’s complaints of prolonged fatigue. Moreover, some patients have reported severe joint pain, or arthritis which may last for weeks or months. Death cases, or hemorrhagic cases related to infection have not been reported in the scientific literature.

Treatment of Chikungunya

Chikungunya fever is diagnosed on the basis of symptoms, physical observations, laboratory testing, and the possibility of exposure to infected mosquitoes. For the chikungunya treatment there is no such specific antiviral drug or medicine. The chikungunya treatment is totally symptomatic and usually includes the remedies for the symptoms and also includes taking sufficient rest, taking more fluid food and medicines to relieve pain (for example paracetamol). Aspirin should be avoided.

Alternative medical systems such as ayurveda and homeopathy have specific treatments for Chikungunya. Drinking loads of water will also help in reducing the pain and suffering from this disease.

Many of these chikungunya treatments are helpful in reducing the symptoms especially the joint pain.

Prevention of Chikungunya

The best way of chikungunya prevention is to avoid mosquito bites. There is no vaccine or drug currently available for chikungunya prevention.

Chikungunya prevention includes removal of stagnant water at home, drains, desert coolers and old tires to avoid breeding of mosquitoes. Using mosquito repellent creams over the exposed parts of the body and using bed nets in rooms while sleeping are also a good method of Chikungunya prevention. Wearing the long sleeved clothes like long trousers of a light shade for protection against mosquitoes can be done. Additionally, a person with chikungunya fever should limit their exposure to mosquito bites to avoid further spreading the infection. The person should stay indoors or under a mosquito net.

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