Chikungunya in the US: two months into 2015

I predicted that chik would become an issue in the US and be as much as a problem as West Nile virus. The two are related viruses and share the same vectors (common mosquitoes) so you could potentially be coinfected (that would suck). In 2014, there were only a few locally acquired cases in the US. There have been no local cases in 2015 so far - BUT - it's winter. And winter means the vectors are asleep in much of the US and this winter in particular means they are sleeping even farther south than normal. I suspect we'll have a number of local cases this year in the southeast - most likely Florida. 

Two months into 2015 and there has been 43 cases of chik in travelers coming back to the US. These cases have been peppered across the US (see figure) but the majority have been in Florida (n=12) and New York (n=9). I have not seen where these cases were identified to their origin. There has been one local case in the US Virgin Islands so we can assume it is established there. 

http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/geo/united-states.html

Cases, outside the US

Costa Rica: 121 
El Salvador 138,617 
French Guiana 12,308
Puerto Rico 24,281
Antigua + Barbados + Cayman + Jamaica 5000

So here's a prediction: we'll see a spike next month as spring breakers go down to the islands to escape the heat and Florida thaws. 

Fun, fun, fun. 

Don't eat dog in Nigeria!

An estimated 5% of dogs in Nigeria that are available to eat are infected with rabies. This is such a sad story - on so many levels. : ( 

Tick busted at the border! But millions get through.

In December 2013, a live Anatolian brown tick (Rhipicephalus bursa) from Macedonia was found on an untanned hide by US Customs and Border Protection agents in Philadelphia. Ticks are vectors of both bacterial and viral pathogens, such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. This was only the fourth case of this species entering the U.S. 

Tennessee's state ornithologist Scott Somershoe was catching migrant birds on a coastal island in Georgia and remarked that large numbers of birds were arriving from their wintering grounds in the Caribbean Islands, Central, and South America forests with ticks on them. Given that millions of birds move between continents, I find it surprising that we don't see more cases of ticks establishing themselves in North America. But this amazing migration phenomenon is not new. Birds have been moving between North and South America for millions of years and as far north as Pennsylvania for 20,000 years. 

One fascinating project would be to pull ticks off birds at places where migrant birds first land or pause (stopover sites) and look at the ectoparasite community and the microbiota they harbor. If ticks and their microbiota differ between sites where the same birds live then why aren't birds homogenizing parasite communities?

Ixodes tick