Heartland Virus Is Carried by Ticks – New Virulent TICK other than LYME
The Heartland virus, a mysterious virus first identified last year in two Missouri farmers, is indeed transmitted to people by ticks, new research suggests.
The findings, published today (July 22) in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, confirm what scientists had suspected.
The virus was first noticed in 2009, when two men in Missouri were admitted to hospitals with high fevers, diarrhea, fatigue and a severe drop in the number of their white blood cells, immune cells that fight infection. Because the disease’s symptoms looked similar to bacterial infection, doctors gave the men antibiotics but they didn’t improve. Read more…
Harry Savage, a medical entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colo., and his colleagues collected more than 7,000 tick nymphs in the Missouri woods.The researchers then ground up the ticks, and analyzed them for genetic information.
They found that about 1 in 500 of members of species Amblyomma americanum, also known as lone star ticks, carried the Heartland virus.
“This tick is widespread throughout the South, and the east. Comment from VLA: The Lyme disease carrying tick and the west nile virus mosquito are products of bioweaponry laboratories, namely near Lyme Connecticut & New York in a high level lab on Plum Island. And here is another vector born disease from the same technology.