Europe West Nile Fever is spreading

Europe: West Nile fever is spreading.

(03.09.2010) The West Nile fever is on the rise. More than seventy years after its discovery in the West Nile District of Uganda (1937), more waves of waves have been reported from the US and Europe. Thirteen people have already lost their lives in the recent wave of infections in Greece and Romania, and since 2002, more than one hundred people have died of West Nile a year on average in the US every year since 2002. Experts fear that the pathogen will continue to spread in Europe and expect in Germany also rising infection numbers.

In northern Greece (Central Macedonia), West Nile fever killed eleven people in 150 severe cases in August, and in Romania two died of seven. 114 patients are currently still in Greece with signs of brain inflammation in inpatient treatment, 80 suspected cases are still being investigated in Romania. However, with only about one percent of those infected, the course of the disease is so severe that treatment becomes necessary. Thus, for example, the number of actual illnesses in Greece is likely to be around 15,000.

Most sufferers from headaches and body aches often accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea. In particularly severe disease (about 0.7 percent of cases) can also encephalitis (meningitis) or meningitis (meningitis) occur because the virus is able to pass through the blood-brain barrier. Fatal kills the disease usually only in certain high-risk patients such. As older people whose immune system is already weakened by another disease. About 13 to 14 days after the infection, the first symptoms appear, but so far no effective treatment is known - there are no drugs or vaccines. The only advantage is that many patients subsequently become immune to the pathogen after illness, d. H. the likelihood of an epidemic decreases from outbreak to outbreak.

Nevertheless, local epidemics occur again and again, such. In Bucharest in 1996, Russia in 1999 and Hungary in 2008, which illustrate the advance of the disease towards northern Europe. Jürgen May from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg explains that "the number of cases (...) in Europe is likely to increase". According to May, the virus spreads unchecked to the north „And nothing speaks against the fact that Germany will also be affected. "Klaus Stark of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin sees it similarly, although in Europe the basic conditions for massive virus spread, such as those in the USA, are not given.

After identifying the West Nile virus in birds in Central Park, New York, in 1999, the virus spread rapidly across the various states, killing hundreds of people each year between 2002 and 2007. Since then, the number has dropped to about 50 deaths per year as Americans have been informed about the disease and possible protective measures through educational campaigns. In 2009, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recorded 720 diseases with 373 cases of encephalitis or meningitis and 30 deaths.

Migratory birds often act as a reservoir for the pathogen and mosquitoes are the most common carriers of the virus. In particular, mosquitoes of the Culex genus and the Asian tiger mosquito, which sting birds and humans, are considered bridge vectors in the spread of West Nile fever. So z. In the United States, for example, large-scale insect killers are used to combat the disease. An effective mosquito repellent (insect repellent and body-covering clothing), however, also offers a good way to protect yourself from a disease.

Europe is also increasingly affected. "For example, we also know infections from humans from Italy or Portugal, but these were smaller and smaller outbreaks or isolated cases," explains Klaus Stark from the Robert Koch Institute. "And the pathogen may have been introduced to migratory birds in the past, even isolated to Germany." However, since the domestic mosquitoes could not serve as transmitters in this regard, so far no outbreak of the disease has been recorded in Germany. However, with the spread of some Clulex genera and the Asian tiger mosquito (bush mosquito), this has changed and so now the risk of infection here on land certainly exists. (Fb)

Also read:
Dangerous tropical fever by bush mosquitoes