Urinary leukotrienes and histamine in patients with varying severity of
acute dengue
Abstract
Vascular leak is a hallmark of severe dengue, and high leukotriene
levels have been observed in dengue mouse models, suggesting a role in
disease pathogenesis. We sought to explore their role in acute dengue,
by assessing levels of urinary leukotriene (LTE4) and histamine in
patients with varying severity of acute dengue. Urinary LTE4, histamine
and creatinine were measured by a quantitative ELISA, in mid-morning
urine samples collected from healthy individuals (n= 19) and patients
with dengue fever (DF= 72) and dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF= 48). The
kinetics of LTE4 and histamine and diurnal variations were assessed in a
subset of patients. Urinary LTE4 levels were significantly higher
(p=0.004) in patients who proceed to develop DHF when compared to
patients with DF during early illness (≤ 4 days) and during the critical
phase (p=0.02). However, LTE4 was not a good predictive marker of DHF as
ROCs gave an AUC value of 0.67 (95% CI 0.57 to 0.76), which was
nevertheless significant (p=0.002). Urinary LTE4 levels did not
associate with the degree of viraemia, infecting virus serotype and was
not different in those with primary vs secondary dengue. LTE4, histamine
and the viral loads showed a marked diurnal variation in both patients
with DF and DHF. Our data suggest that LTE4 could play a role in disease
pathogenesis and since there are safe and effective cysteinyl
leukotriene receptor blockers, it would be important to assess their
efficacy in reducing dengue disease severity.