Home >> ALL ISSUES >> 2014 Issues >> Unwinding the mystery of Heartland virus disease

Unwinding the mystery of Heartland virus disease

image_pdfCreate PDF

William Check, PhD

July 2014—Missouri is no country for old men. Clinical, laboratory, and epidemiologic investigations conducted during the past five years have identified a new virus that can cause considerable illness and perhaps even death. All eight patients definitively proven to be ill with this virus have been over age 50; seven lived in Missouri.

However, it’s unlikely that infection with the new virus, called Heartland virus, or HLV, is limited to men over 50 who live in Missouri. (For that matter, not everyone would agree that being over age 50 is old.) Rather, the demographics of HLV infection to date reflect the age and occupations of the region’s male population. “Some of these men [who were infected with HLV] were farmers and all spent a lot of time outdoors,” Scott Folk, MD, who cared for the first two patients in whom HLV was identified, tells CAP TODAY. Current evidence suggests that HLV is spread by the bite of infected Lone Star ticks (Amblyomma americanum).

CAP TODAY
X