Health authorities in the United States are issuing warnings and closing public parks due to a rare but potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease. This week, a resident of the US state of New Hampshire died after being hospitalised with eastern equine encephalitis. Cases have also been detected in other states.
But what is eastern equine encephalitis? How is it spread? What, as the name suggests, do horses have to do with it? And is it a problem for Australia? What is eastern equine encephalitis? Eastern equine encephalitis is caused by a virus typically only found in some eastern parts of the Americas, from Central America to Canada . Eastern equine encephalitis virus causes neurological disease, particularly encephalitis (inflammation and swelling of the brain) and is transmitted to humans via a mosquito bite. Symptoms can be severe and potentially fatal.
But most people bitten by a mosquito carrying the virus won’t have symptoms. For those who develop disease, symptoms include headache, neck stiffness, confusion, seizures and coma. About one-third of patients with severe symptoms will die and many of those who survive have ongoing neurological problems.
It’s not just people at risk from the virus. Horses are susceptible too and, like humans, can also develop fatal encephalitis after a bite from an infected mosquito. The virus was discovered after an outbreak of fatal disease in horses in the New England region of the US in 1831, hence the reference to equine illness in.