Posted on 09/21/2012 4:33:01 PM PDT by neverdem
This year is on track to be the worst on record for West Nile virus in the United States. As of 11 September, more than 2,600 new cases, including 118 deaths, had been reported from across the country to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.
Symptoms of the mosquito-borne disease range from none (in most people) to life-threatening brain inflammation, and it can leave survivors with long-term disabilities including paralysis and fatigue. Researchers are now investigating suggestions that even mild infections may leave another lasting burden — kidney disease.
“We are early in our understanding, but this really worries me,” says Kristy Murray, an epidemiologist and clinical researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has found hints that the virus may persist in the kidney long after the initial infection. This week she is moving her work on the long-term consequences of West Nile to a new biosecurity-level-3 laboratory at nearby Texas Children’s Hospital, where she will explore a link between the virus and kidney disease.
Researchers agree that the claim needs to be investigated. “If Murray’s findings are true, we have to think about what to do with all of these people with mild infections,” says William Reisen, an entomologist at the Center for Vectorborne Diseases at the University of California, Davis. But Murray is also facing scepticism, which she hopes to address in the latest phase of her research.
Murray’s quest began at a meeting of West Nile survivors in Texas in 2009, where a man in his early fifties who had recovered from a 2003 infection announced that he had kidney disease. He was dead within a year. To Murray, his illness brought to mind studies in which researchers had detected and cultured the virus in kidney tissue...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Dogs kept out in the yard can die of the horrible heartworms disease from mosquito bites - now this!!
There are a lot of natural repellants that won't harm a pet & they should be used before ever walking your dog.
From the research I did on heartworms (was deciding whether or not to adopt a dog that tested positive), it’s a very rare affliction, distorted into epidemic proportions in order to sell the very expensive tests, preventatives, and treatments.
Heartworm is hardly a rare problem! It affects the dogs lungs and heart and can kill a dog if not treated or prevented.
I didn’t say it wasn’t harmful, even deadly.
I decided to adopt the dog with heartworms after all, knowing that she might not survive and that I might have to put her down if the suffering gets to be too much.
But when you look at the number of reported cases, and account for those that go unreported, it’s comparatively small.
There is one answer for this:
DDT.
applied early and often.
This is the malaria of our time.
BTW malaria is on the rise here in the States.
All those swamps not drained.
My Great Aunt caught malaria on the beach in CT in 1899.
Our future as a Third World country.
Vets sell heartworm preventive pills.
We use Advantage Multi. We buy it from our vet, for about $10 an application, used monthly.
Chemists develop reversible method of tagging proteins
Novel non-antibiotic agents against MRSA and common strep infections
Monsanto's GM Corn And Cancer In Rats: Real Scientists Deeply Unimpressed.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Advantage Multi does everything I need for my dogs but repel/kill mosquitoes. Do you treat your dogs for those? If so, how?
Right now, I use a chewable (expensive) for all types of worms and Biospot for mosquitoes and all forms of fleas.
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