10,000 Cases Of Dengue In Puerto Rico In 2007 - Cases Reported In Texas, Hawaii - Seattle Times [View All]

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Thus far, cases of dengue fever in North America — where disease scientists thought they had conquered it 30 years ago — have tended to be scattered and affect relatively few people. But increased travel to and from South America, where a resurgence has made dengue widespread, is thought to be boosting the disease's spread northward. And some experts suspect climate change is aggravating the problem.

"It's starting to creep up from South America to the Caribbean," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If it can occur right at the tip of Texas, a disease which maybe people never heard of could actually appear here."

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There is no vaccine against dengue, nor is there a drug that can cure it, although a race to develop both seems to be gathering momentum. Doctors rely on the patient's immune system to fight off the virus, and most people who get the less-virulent forms of the virus recover, although many have the pains that have given dengue its nickname, breakbone fever. Hawaii had an outbreak in 2001. Puerto Rico had 10,000 cases last year, and in recent years there have been several cases on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Manzanarez apparently contracted the disease on a vacation in Mexico; she died May 9, 2005.

All four types of dengue are found in the Americas, and the two types of mosquitoes that transmit it are present in the U.S. Dengue cannot be passed directly from person to person. After biting an infected person, a mosquito transfers the virus when it bites a healthy person. Theoretically, an infected traveler who returns from South America could spark an outbreak here. The likelihood of such a scenario developing is the subject of a spirited debate among scientists. So is the role that global warming might play in expanding the range of the two mosquito species that carry the virus: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (also called the Asian tiger mosquito).

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004144327_dengue25.html