CCHFV: another tick-spread disease

       Today while hiking Russian Ridge above the Stanford campus,  had to brush through a tight spot between two coyote brush bushes. After getting through I felt a tickling sensation on my arm and looked down to see a tick marching its way up my left arm, looking for a place in my flesh to sink its mandibles and begin sucking my blood. I quickly flicked it off, back into the forest from which it came, and the whole interaction began a discussion within our group about Lyme disease and how many people we knew who had gotten it. 

   In the US ticks are often associated with carrying Lyme disease, but throughout Africa and the middle east as seen below, ticks are associated with  less prevalent but much deadlier disease, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF). 

   CCHF, which is caused by the Crimean Congo haemoragic fever virus is not pathogenic to the cattle and sheep that the hyalomma genus ticks usually live on, but is very syptomatic in humans, killing about 30% of those that it infects.  Just today in Pakistan, a sixth person died in the country's most recent outbreak of the disease.    

Generally the symptoms of CCHF disease arise suddenly 2-9 days after the initial tick bite. While they begin with a sensitivity to light, muscle pain, headache and dizziness, the disease quickly progresses to include petechial and ecchymoses rashes that bleed into the skin and lead to death within 5 days of illness.

While luckily CCHF has not spread to the Americas, in the last 5 years ticks carrying the disease have been found in farms in Southeast Europe. To save lives and stop the spread of this disease the WHO recommends treating each patient found with CCHF should be treated in the same way as if they had Ebola.

Ref: 

WHO | Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. (n.d.). Retrieved October 8, 2017, from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs208/en/

Galimand, M., Guiyoule, A., Gerbaud, G., Rasoamanana, B., Chanteau, S., Carniel, E., & Courvalin,    P. (1997). Multidrug Resistance in Yersinia pestis Mediated by a Transferable Plasmid. New      England Journal of Medicine, 337(10), 677–681. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199709043371004

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