- ATLANTA - By watering the arid Southwest, El Niño has primed the
region for a resurgence of the hantavirus epidemic that killed two dozen
people during the green spring of 1993, researchers say.
-
- Hantavirus is a potentially deadly rodent-borne
virus that leads capillaries in the lungs to leak, so that nearly half
the victims drown in their own blood serum. El Niño, which set the
stage for the 1993 outbreak, is a recurring warming of the Pacific Ocean
that heats the air and propels prevailing winds to the east rather than
west.
-
- Thanks again to El Niño's warmth
and rainfall, record numbers of rodent carriers of the virus have survived
the winter and begun to multiply, says biologist Terry Yates of the University
of New Mexico.
-
- New research shows that deer mice, which
carry the predominant hantavirus strain found in the USA - the Sin Nombre
virus - have multiplied to 18 mice per hectare (about 2 acres). That's
up from an average of one or two in the years since the 1993 epidemic,
Yates said Friday at a hantavirus conference sponsored by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
- At least 11% of the mice carry the virus
in nonepidemic years. In 1993, almost one-third of deer mice were infected,
Yates says.
-
- Health officials have begun discussing
whether - and when - to alert people to rodent-proof their homes and avoid
mice-infested buildings.
-
- "If we issue a warning and nothing
happens, we'll be accused of crying wolf," says Paul Ettestad of the
New Mexico Department of Health.
-
- Doctors believe that people become infected
by inhaling dust from rodent droppings. In 1993, Sin Nombre infected 48
people, killing 27 of them. As of Feb. 24, 178 cases have been reported
in 29 states since 1993.
-
- One of those cases, reported last month,
involved a woman in the high country of Arizona. She was apparently exposed
after snowed-in mice sought food and shelter in her home.
|
Homepage