Vidal OM, Acosta-Reyes J, Padilla J, et al. - Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-borne alphavirus of the Togaviridae family, causes a severe and debilitating disease with high morbidity. Via comprehensively analyzing clinical data from 1,160 individuals with CHIKV infection from the Colombian Caribbean, who were diagnosed during the 2014 epidemic peak and before the Zika epidemic (registered back in 2015), researchers here investigated the relationship between symptomatology and diverse phenotypic responses. Most individuals presented with fever (94.4%), headache (73.28%) and general discomfort (59.4%), which are distinct clinical symptoms of a viral infection. Seven different symptom profiles were identified clustering groups of individuals with distinguishable phenotypic response. Extreme and intermediate phenotypes of CHIKV infection could be potentially defined using this. In addition, the observation that i) females exhibit different phenotypic response pattern compared with men, ii) all LCCA-derived clusters mostly had females, and iii) that there is a correlation between the number of symptoms and the cluster of CHIKV infected individuals, emphasizes the significance of gender-specific and phenotypic-response-specific treatments focused on the at-risk female CHIKV population, and subpopulations with a more extreme phenotypic spectrum. Findings suggest the benefits of a more refined characterization of CHIKV patient sub-populations (LCCA-derived clusters) for the implementation of specific diagnosis protocols and treatments, which could aid health providers to implement more personalized and cost-effective care for CHIKV patients, depending on their phenotypic response to the infection (ie, LCCA-derived clusters)