DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF BRAZILIAN SPOTTED FEVER WITH DENGUE IN THE CONTEXT OF ACUTE FEBRILE ILLNESS

Abstract

Acute febrile diseases are common and often associated with infectious agents in tropical countries such as Brazil. With nonspecific clinical manifestations and hard to differentiate with a number of endemic diseases such as dengue, leptospirosis, and other fatal diseases, Brazilian spotted fever has rarely been considered in the diagnosis, fact that with the consequent delay in the specific antimicrobial treatment, has determined high lethality often observed in our country. In this article the authors discuss the difficulty of the differential diagnosis of FMB with dengue, one of the most important and frequent infectious diseases in Brazil, where epidemics are reported regularly and the possibility of errors in diagnosis due to clinical similarity is a reality.