Too Early To Talk About An Epidemic Of Dengue Fever In The United States

Too Early To Talk About An Epidemic Of Dengue Fever In The United States.
Two more cases of dengue fever were reported by condition officials in Florida this week, bringing the complete to 46 confirmed cases since hold out September, but a excel government health official said it's too early to say whether the mosquito-borne tropical illness is gaining a foothold in the United States. "We don't know how dengue got to Key West, and whether or not it's endemic," said Harold Margolis, leader of the dengue spin-off of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in San Juan, PR. "It's only booming to play out as we watch to see what happens during this warm, wet period of time, which is when dengue is at its peak".

And "That's the maladjusted with a disease like this. You have to watch it but, at the same time, you also have to essay to control it". The most common virus transmitted by mosquitoes, dengue causes up to 100 million infections and 25000 deaths worldwide each year. The infection is found mostly in tropical climates, and many parts of the world, including Central and South America and the Caribbean, are currently experiencing epidemics.

In Puerto Rico, for instance, there have been at least five deaths and more than 6000 suspected cases of dengue this year. Margolis said it's doable that the Florida outbreak is an anchoretic incident. "We've seen this happen in other parts of the world, such as in northern Australia, where travelers re-emergence with the infection and launch dengue, it spreads for a while of time, and then it goes away".

In the United States, a smattering of locally acquired cases in Texas have been reported since 1980, and all of them have coincided with massive outbreaks in neighboring Mexican cities. The stand up dengue outbreak in Florida was 75 years ago, according to the CDC.

The disease typically causes flu-like symptoms such as peak fever, headache, and achy muscles, bones and joints. Symptoms typically begin about two to seven days after being bitten. "It's also called breakbone fever, because some bodies get in horrible, severe pains in their bones and joints," explained Dr Bert Lopansri, medical principal of the Loyola University Health System International Medicine and Traveler's Immunization Clinic, in Maywood, Ill. There is no prescription or vaccine, and in most cases the illness resolves on its own within a connect of weeks.

Mosquito Bite Waiting To Happen

Mosquito Bite Waiting To Happen.
Some mortals who fell mark to a 2009-2010 outbreak of dengue fever in Florida carried a particular viral strain that they did not get into the country from a recent trip abroad, according to a fresh genetic analysis conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, most cases of dengue fever on American sully have typically confusing travelers who "import" the painful mosquito-borne disease after having been bitten elsewhere. But though the virus cannot move from person to person, mosquitoes are able to pick up dengue from infected patients and, in turn, counterpane the disease among a local populace.

The CDC's viral fingerprinting of Key West, FL, dengue patients therefore raises the specter that a affliction more commonly found in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia might be gaining gripping power among North American mosquito populations. "Florida has the mosquitoes that go through dengue and the climate to sustain these mosquitoes all year around," cautioned read lead author Jorge Munoz-Jordan. "So, there is potential for the dengue virus to be transmitted locally, and cause dengue outbreaks derive the ones we saw in Key West in 2009 and 2010".

And "Every year more countries sum another one of the dengue virus subtypes to their lists of locally transmitted viruses, and this could be the action with Florida," said Munoz-Jordan, chief of CDC's molecular diagnostics vim in the dengue branch of the division of vector-borne disease. He and his colleagues detonation their findings in the April issue of CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Dengue fever is the most widespread mosquito-borne viral sickness in the world, now found in roughly 100 countries, the study authors noted. That said, until the 2009-2010 southern Florida outbreak, the United States had remained basically dengue-free for more than half a century.

Ultimately, 93 patients in the Key West enclosure simply were diagnosed with the ailment during the outbreak, which seemingly ended in 2010, with no new cases reported in 2011. But the fall short of of later cases does not give experts much comfort. The reason: 75 percent of infected patients show no symptoms, and the massive "house mosquito" population in the region remains a disease-transmitting disaster waiting to happen.