New York City also will likely be spared a repeat of last summer's epidemic of West Nile virus, a close relative of St. Louis encephalitis, predicts Jonathan Day, a mosquito researcher at UF's Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach. Weather conditions are expected to keep both mosquito-borne diseases in check along the East Coast, Day said. Day is combining satellite surveillance data from NASA, weather information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and a map of North America to develop a tool that could be made available nationwide via a Web site. The map would change as various indicators for encephalitis show up or disappear across the country. The hope is that a risk map could provide valuable time for officials to educate residents about the risk of encephalitis and prevent an outbreak.
Mosquitoes get the encephalitis virus from infected birds and pass it on to humans.
Encephalitis starts as a flu-like illness but can progress to a fatal inflammation of the brain. Most people never exhibit symptoms but some develop muscle weakness, tremors, confusion and paralysis that can lead to nerve damage and death. With the help of the risk map, Day hopes to be able to predict when conditions are ripe for another outbreak of West Nile, a form of encephalitis never seen in the New World before last year. Data on surface temperatures, rainfall, standing water and vegetation cover will be incorporated into the map. West Nile epidemics differ from those of St. Louis encephalitis, Day said.