Introduction: Dengue and leptospirosis are two febrile illnesses of great clinical and epidemiological importance in Brazil. Their significant degree of symptomatic similarity makes clinical diagnosis difficult.
Objective: To diagnose leptospirosis differentially in patients with clinically suspected dengue.
Leptospirosis is a febrile disease with a typically underestimated global incidence, especially in regions where dengue is endemic. Therefore, it is difficult to accurately determine the number of leptospirosis cases in these areas, which contributes to significant under-reporting this disease. In this study, we estimated the number of possible leptospirosis cases among dengue-like cases that were reported during 2008, 2010, and 2012 in the city of Fortaleza, northeast Brazil.
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