The bite made her sick with chikungunya fever

Aug 8, 2015 07:39 GMT  ·  By

A recent paper in the journal BMJ Case Reports details how, after being bitten by a mosquito while on holiday in the Caribbean, a woman was left nearly blind in her right eye. 

The woman vacationed on the island of Grenada in July 2014. She suffered several mosquito bites, of which one made her sick with chikungunya fever.

The condition badly damaged her optical nerve

When she became sick with chikungunya fever while on vacation in the Caribbean in July 2014, the woman, then 69 years old, experienced symptoms such as fever, joint pain, muscle weakness and rashes. A local doctor treated her with steroids, and for a while, her condition improved.

Then, when she returned to the UK in August, things took a turn for the worse. Thus, the woman noticed that she could no longer see all that well with her right eye.

She sought medical help and doctors subjected her to a series of tests in an attempt to determine what was causing her vision loss. By the time they diagnosed her with chikungunya fever, however, the condition and the inflammation it caused had already damaged her right optic nerve.

Had medical experts treated the woman with steroids sooner, the inflammation that damaged her optic nerve and nearly blinded her in her right eye might have subsided. However, the team first had to rule out other potential illnesses and especially an infection, Live Science explains.

“One of the main risks of high-dose steroids is that they can exacerbate an infection, if she had another infection somewhere else in the body. This is why we had to await all the other tests before we could start steroids, and this took six days,” said specialist Abhijit Mohite in an interview.

Since the inflammation triggered by the chikungunya fever she contracted while in the Caribbean basically killed cells in the woman's right optic nerve, the vision loss is permanent.

There is no cure or at least treatment for the condition

Chikungunya fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes. In recent years, it's been documented not just in the Caribbean, where this woman was infected, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America and even some parts of the US.

The disease triggers inflammation in the body, which in turn causes symptoms like muscle and joint pain. Nausea, vomiting, headaches, fever and rashes can also occur. Presently, there is no known cure or treatment. The best doctors can do is try to manage the symptoms by administering steroids.