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Scientists Fear Deadly West
Nile Virus Has Arrived In UK

By James Meikle
Health Correspondent
10-28-2

Scientists are urgently trying to determine whether a killer virus wreaking havoc in the US has arrived in Britain.
 
Evidence has been found in dead birds of antibodies to West Nile virus, although no human cases have been detected where the illness has developed in this country. Doctors had been warned to look out for unexplained instances of brain inflammation.
 
Previous cases in Britain have been identified only among travellers, although most people who get it do not even display symptoms. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, warned earlier this year that the virus might become a threat, even though official estimates had described the risk as low.
 
He is coordinating meetings on how an outbreak might be tackled, but it is still unclear whether the birds in the study had the active virus, caught from mosquitos, or had merely developed antibodies while migrating to infected areas or mixing with birds travelling from these areas.
 
The Department of Health said: "Public health officials and the department have been considering whether West Nile virus poses a risk of infection in this country. We will need to consider the implications of this study of bird populations once it is published."
 
The disease has claimed 188 lives in the US this year, mostly among people over 50. A further 3,200 people have been identified with the disease in the past 10 months. The disease, now spreading quickly through the western hemisphere, has spread to 38 states and Washington DC since it arrived in New York in 1999. Birds are thought to be the main hosts for the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes feasting on their blood. The mosquitoes then infect animals and humans.
 
The risk of human to human transmission is thought to be low but there is concern over infected blood used in transfusions. A handful of such infections have been identified in the US. An infant who might have been infected through breast-feeding has been reported as having antibodies but is said still to be healthy .
 
Officals from the Centres for Disease Control in the US are in regular contact with public health officials here about the disease.
 
The alert was raised by scientists at the Oxford-based Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. They plan to announce their findings in a scientific journal shortly. Limited surveillance of birds has been under way for about two years but it was hampered by restrictions against foot and mouth disease.
 
Doctors have been warned for some time to inform authorities about unexplained brain inflammation. Samples of blood and fluids have not indicated any human infection, a point emphasised by the Department of Health and the public health laboratory service for England and Wales.
 
The risk of infection has been said to be low, partly because the types of mosquito that transmit the disease were thought not to be sufficiently numerous to sustain transmission to humans. Swallows, warblers and whitethroats all travel to parts of Africa where the disease is endemic.
 
The virus was first identified in women with fever in the West Nile district of Uganda in 1937 and was first linked to inflammation of the brain and spinal cord in Israel in 1957. It has spread through many parts of the world, with outbreaks in humans and horses in parts of Europe since the 1960s.
 
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,820628,00.html






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