CDC isolates a new virus in Missouri

[JamesSavik]

Mysterious New 'Heartland Virus' Discovered In Missouri

 

 

by Richard Knox

 

NPR >> http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/29/160272241/mysterious-new-heartland-virus-discovered-in-missouri

 

Two Missouri farmers have been infected with a brand-new tick-borne virus that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling the Heartland virus.

The men recovered but suffered serious illness that required hospital care and weeks of convalescence. Symptoms included fever, severe fatigue, headache and nausea. Their platelet counts plummeted, but even though platelets are necessary for blood clotting, the men didn't suffer abnormal bleeding.

A report on the new virus is in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

So far, the Missouri men are the only known cases of Heartland virus in the world. But experts are sure they'll find more.After all, the men lived 60 miles apart and got infected independently. That means there must be more of the mysterious new virus in the northwest Missouri environment.

 

"We expect to find new cases," Dr. William Nicholson of the CDC told Shots. "We expect this thing may be wider in geographic distribution than we currently know."

The virus is dubbed "Heartland" not only because that's where it was discovered, but because of who found it: an astute infectious disease doctor named Scott Folk who works at Heartland Medical Center in St. Joseph, Mo.

Folk is well-known to the CDC. "Whenever he sends us a sample, we pay attention because we're likely to find something," Nicholson says. In this case, Folk sent samples from 14 patients back in 2009.

Two of them puzzled the CDC experts — and then surprised them when electron microscope studies revealed a novel virus now called Heartland. The other dozen cases involved a more common tick-borne bacterial infection called ehrilichiosis.

"We're pretty excited about it," Nicholson says about the Heartland virus. "It's not every day that you find something new — particularly in the world of tick-borne diseases. We often work with what might be considered antique diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever"

Nicholson says the new virus is in the phlebovirus family, which contains more than 70 members. And here's another twist: Heartland virus appears to be a cousin of another new human virus called severe fever with thromboctopenia syndrom virus, discovered last year in China. Another possible cousin may be Bhanja virus, a little-studied virus that has been found in some mammals, birds and reptiles in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Nicholson says the CDC, working with Folk, is looking for other people with symptoms similar to the two Heartland victims to see if they're infected with the same virus. The researchers are also analyzing thousands of samples from Missouri ticks, other crawling insects, and animals wild and domestic to see if any harbor Heartland virus.

 

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NEJM report >>http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1203378

[Daddydavek]

Ticks are abundant almost everywhere in MO. We have too many deer which serve as hosts and spread the critters everywhere.

 

The following link shows the deer harvest totals for 2011 by county but it still isn't enough. I live in suburan St. Louis County and have seen 7 deer in my subdivision in the past three days. Two were in my back yard which is less than 3400 square feet!

 

http://mdc.mo.gov/hunting-trapping/hunting-outlooks-and-reports/deer-reports/deer-harvest-map

[Cia]

Oh great James, remind me about tick borne viruses when I'm about to go camping for the extended weekend. Thanks a bunch man! I grew up getting bitten like crazy though, and I'm still all right. Well mostly. I guess.

[JamesSavik]

Some people act like hunting is some pointless barbaric ritual but in some places, if the game is not thinned out, there are severe health consequences for both species.

 

Deer aren't smart. They will breed to the point to where they can completely strip an area of all available food and become a huge nuisance to farmers.

 

Either we thin the heard or they thin our heard.

[Ashi]

The new disease is a virus. However, there is a study on Lyme Disease (another tick-borne disease) and how lizards help to cleanse the bacteria worth thinking about. Don't know if they found out the agent that cleanses the Lyme disease spirochete yet.

 

http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0429/lizard.html

 

The abundance of deers is a result of thinning population of their natural predators. Hunting with bows and arrows is usually allowed in some areas of California wilderness.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Ashi

[Houdinii]

Is anyone else disturbed by the fact they are "excited" about a new virus that sounds pretty nasty, lol? I'm probably only about 30 mins away from Daddydavek on the Illinois side of the river, and ticks are REALLY bad this year. If I get sick and one doc gets 'excited' his nose is gonna double in size....

[JamesSavik]

Evolution at the micro-organism level occurs at a furious rate. That's why bacteria develop immunity to antibiotics so quickly and new diseases pop up every so often.

 

The implication is that sooner or later, one is going to pop up that is going to hurt us pretty bad.

[joann414]

Ticks are horrible where I live. It is very expensive to keep the medicine on my pets, but I do because of what any tick can do to them. But, this makes me not want to even walk in the grass or in the woods around my home. Pretty damn scary.