1. Introduction
Dengue fever is the most prevalent mosquito-borne viral illness in humans, affecting as many as 390 million individuals worldwide each year (Bhatt et al., 2010). It is primarily transmitted by the female Aedes mosquito ( Gubler, 1989) and can be caused by any of the four serotypes of the dengue virus (DENV1–4). Except for very specific cases, serotyping the dengue virus is not part of medical practice. Symptoms of this viral infection vary from an acute self-limiting febrile illness to dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome (Chen and Vasilakis, 2011), which are life-threatening conditions characterized by severe vascular leakage, thrombocytopenia and hemorrhagic manifestations (Gubler, 2002).