The people of a Caribbean
nation known as Haiti are in great fear now following the news of a new mosquito-borne
disease detected in a patient. This disease is known as Mayaro virus. According
to Florida researchers, this disease has never been detected in any patient
before now.
Mayaro virus is
closely related to chikungunya virus and was isolated in Trinidad in 1954. Most
of the reported cases, however, were confined to small outbreaks in the
Amazon.
Whether this event
signals the beginning of a new epidemic in the Caribbean, is currently
unknown.
"While the
current attention was focused on the Zika virus, the discovery of another virus
transmitted by mosquitoes that can be going around the Caribbean is
alarming," said Dr. Glenn Morris, Director of the Emerging Pathogens
Institute at UF.
"[...] Hopefully
we will not see the same massive outbreaks we've seen with chikungunya, dengue
and now Zika. However, these results emphasize that there are more viruses
waiting in the wings and that can be a threat in the future, and we need to
monitor."
"The virus we
detected is genetically different from those which have recently been described
in Brazil, and we do not know yet if it is unique in Haiti or if it is a
recombinant strain of different types of Mayaro virus," said Dr. John
Lednicky, associate professor in environmental and global health department at
the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and lead author of the
study whose results were published online August 26 by the CDC in Emerging
Infectious Disease.
Symptoms of Mayaro
fever are similar to those of chikungunya fever: fever, joint pain, muscle pain
and rash. Abdominal pain is also a feature of Mayaro fever, but joint pain can
last longer.
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
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