I know there are diseases that are gender dependent (rather harmone dependent), but I didnt know that Dengue was also gender dependent! Today, I saw somebody reading the ‘Home’ section of Straits Times on the MRT which carried a huge illustration of how Dengue infects men and women. The first half was about dengue mosquitoes infecting men and the second half was about how infected women inturn infect the mosquitoes!

A google search didnt yield any link to women being the only people who can infect the mosquitoes with dengue virus (to make them carriers). Is it true? Can anyone confirm this?

(I cant access the Straitstimes website as it is paid membership =()

Update: As Mitokondrion says, it was simply an act of political correctness to show the cycle of Dengue in Singapore (use men first and then women). Perhaps the caption should have been well formed instead of putting it as ‘women infect mosquitoes’ it could be something like ‘patient infects mosquitoes’- definitely less gender biased!