More than 1,000 exposed to dengue in Florida: CDC
_http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66C65X20100713_
(http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66C65X20100713)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five percent of the population of Key West, Florida
-- more than 1,000 people -- have been infected at some point with the
dengue virus, government researchers reported on Tuesday.
Most probably did not even know it, but the findings show the sometimes
deadly infection is making its way north into the United States, the
researchers said.
"We're concerned that if dengue gains a foothold in Key West, it will
travel to other southern cities where the mosquito that transmits dengue is
present, like Miami," said Harold Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"These cases represent the reemergence of dengue fever in Florida and
elsewhere in the United States after 75 years," Margolis said in a statement.
"These people had not traveled outside of Florida, so we need to determine
if these cases are an isolated occurrence or if dengue has once again
become endemic in the continental United States."
Dengue is the most common virus transmitted by mosquitoes, infecting 50
million to 100 million people every year and killing 25,000 of them.
It can cause classic flu-like symptoms but can also take on a hemorrhagic
form that causes internal and external bleeding and sudden death. Companies
are working on a vaccine but there is not any effective drug to treat it.
Dengue was eradicated in the United States in the 1940s but a few locally
acquired U.S. cases have been confirmed along the Texas-Mexico border since
the 1980s. More cases have been reported recently in Mexico and the
Caribbean.
After 27 cases of dengue were reported in Florida in 2009, scientists from
the CDC and the Florida Department of Health took blood samples from 240
randomly chosen Key West residents.
Of these, 5 percent had active dengue infections or antibodies to the
virus, showing they had been infected, the researchers told the International
Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases being held in Atlanta.
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