Tropical dengue fever may threaten US

January 9, 2008

Tropical dengue fever may threaten U.S.: report

Tue Jan 8, 2008 5:27pm EST

WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Dengue fever -- a tropical infection

that usually causes flu-like illness -- may be poised to spread across

the United States and urgent study is needed, health officials said on

Tuesday.

Cases of the sometimes deadly mosquito-borne disease have been

reported in Texas and this may be the beginning of a new trend, said

Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and

Infectious Diseases, and his senior scientific adviser, Dr. Morens.

A warming climate and less-than-stellar efforts to control mosquitoes

could accelerate its spread northwards, they cautioned.

" Widespread appearance of dengue in the continental United States is a

real possibility, " they wrote in a commentary in the Journal of the

American Medical Association.

" Worldwide, dengue is among the most important reemerging infectious

diseases, with an estimated 50 to 100 million annual cases, 500,000

hospitalizations and, by World Health Organization estimates, 22,000

deaths, mostly in children. "

They compared dengue to West Nile virus, which first appeared in New

York in 1999 and has now spread to the entire continental United

States, Canada and Mexico. West Nile killed at least 98 people in the

United States last year.

Both viruses are carried by mosquitoes. Dengue can be carried by the

Aedes albopictus or Asian tiger mosquito -- first seen in 1985 in the

United States -- as well as the more common Aedes aegypti species.

Most people infected with a dengue virus have no symptoms or a mild

fever. It can cause minor bleeding from the nose or gums, but can also

cause severe fever and shock and without treatment can kill.

" The combined effects of global urbanization and increasing air travel

are expected to make dengue a growing international health problem for

the foreseeable future, " Fauci and Morens wrote.

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