Yes, they need to be initialized once before calling optixDenoiserCreate().
Other than that, I have no idea what your code is doing. I neither know your optixu namespace functions nor can I see if your denoiserParams and denoiserOptions are even used.
Your createDenoiser() function is not matching the optixDenoiserCreate() function signature, so that isn’t a direct wrapper.
You have the parameters there which you would normally set inside the OptixDenoiserOptions directly, so does that happen inside the createDenoiser() function and does that initialize a potentially local structure again correctly?
How do you initialize the denoiserParams fields hdrIntensity, hdrAverageColor, blendFactor, temporalModeUsePreviousLayers?
The OptiX SDK optixDenoiser example should show the correct setup.
You might also want to change your implementation to the newer AOV denoiser modes once you found the problem.
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/optix-8-0-denoiser-camera-space-vs-world-space/262875/4