Chikungunya spreads to the United States

While most of the world’s attention has been concentrated on Ebola, another virus originating in Africa has been spreading to the United States. Chikungunya is a single stranded RNA virus in the Togaviridae family.

Previously, the travel-acquired cases of Chikungunya have been found in forty-five states, but now eleven locally transmitted cases have been identified in Florida by ArboNET, the national surveillance system for arthropod-borne diseases. Chikungunya was first identified in Tanzania in 1952 and has since then spread to South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.

Photo Courtesy of the CDC

Chikungunya is transmitted by two species of mosquitos Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Compared to mosquitos that spread other diseases, such as West Nile virus, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are more likely to live around humans or inside buildings. In fact, the genus is derived from the Latin word, aedificium which means building or temple. This proximity to humans increases the risk of infection, so keeping mosquitoes away from the infected is key for containment.

Photo courtesy of University of Florida

Symptoms of Chikungunya include severe joint pain, swelling around the joints, fever, conjunctivitis, nausea, rash, headache, and muscle pain. The fever typically breaks after a two days and other acute symptoms resolver after seven to ten days, but joint pain can linger for months afterwards. Currently, there is neither a vaccine nor an anti-viral cure for Chikungunya, as the disease has been poorly researched. The CDC and Florida Department of Health are encouraging preventative measures such as draining standing water, keeping windows and doors closed, and wearing insect-repellant.

Currently, there is neither a vaccine nor an anti-viral cure for Chikungunya, as the disease has been poorly researched. The CDC and Florida Department of Health are encouraging preventative measures such as draining standing water, keeping windows and doors closed, and wearing insect-repellant.

References:

http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/

http://newsroom.doh.state.fl.us/wp-content/uploads/newsroom/2014/05/071714-Locally-Aquired-Chikungunya.pdf

-Madeleine Bousquet

First Diagnosis of Ebola in the U.S.

The first Ebola diagnosis to ever happen in the United States occurred earlier today in Dallas in a man who recently traveled to Liberia.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this man left Liberia on September 19^th, arrived in the United States on September 20^th, and subsequently developed suspicious symptoms after a few days.  Upon further inspection, this man was diagnosed with Ebola.  Currently, he is hospitalized and quarantined at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, though he is believed to have been in contact with a few individuals after showing Ebola symptoms.  Still, experts stress that Ebola is not a public health threat for the United States because transmission requires direct contact and relies on poor health infrastructure and failure of adequate public health systems. Experts also stress that appropriate measures were taken to prevent Ebola from arriving in the United States, including screenings at the airport, but that these screenings obviously do not prevent those who are infected but do not yet display symptoms from traveling.  Those in contact with the patient have been put in isolation and the ambulance used to transport the patient has been disinfected.  

--Andrew Duong

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/30/health/ebola-us/