Abstract
West Nile (WN) virus transmission in the United States during 2000 was most intense on Staten Island, New York, where 10 neurologic illnesses among humans and 2 among horses occurred. WN virus was isolated from Aedes vexans, Culex pipiens, Cx. salinarius, Ochlerotatus triseriatus, and Psorophora ferox, and WN viral RNA was detected in Anopheles punctipennis. An elevated weekly minimum infection rate (MIR) for Cx. pipiens and increased dead bird density were present for 2 weeks before the first human illness occurred. Increasing mosquito MIRs and dead bird densities in an area may be indicators of an increasing risk for human infections. A transmission model is proposed involving Cx. pipiens and Cx. restuans as the primary enzootic and epizootic vectors among birds, Cx. salinarius as the primary bridge vector for humans, and Aedes/Ochlerotatus spp. as bridge vectors for equine infection.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (113.1 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Bernard K. A., Maffei J. G., Jones S. A., Kauffman E. B., Ebel G., Dupuis A. P., 2nd, Ngo K. A., Nicholas D. C., Young D. M., Shi P. Y. West Nile virus infection in birds and mosquitoes, New York State, 2000. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001 Jul-Aug;7(4):679–685. doi: 10.3201/eid0704.010415. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Nasci R. S., White D. J., Stirling H., Oliver J. A., Daniels T. J., Falco R. C., Campbell S., Crans W. J., Savage H. M., Lanciotti R. S. West Nile virus isolates from mosquitoes in New York and New Jersey, 1999. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001 Jul-Aug;7(4):626–630. doi: 10.3201/eid0704.010404. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Shi P. Y., Kauffman E. B., Ren P., Felton A., Tai J. H., Dupuis A. P., 2nd, Jones S. A., Ngo K. A., Nicholas D. C., Maffei J. High-throughput detection of West Nile virus RNA. J Clin Microbiol. 2001 Apr;39(4):1264–1271. doi: 10.1128/JCM.39.4.1264-1271.2001. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Spielman A. Population structure in the Culex pipiens complex of mosquitos. Bull World Health Organ. 1967;37(2):271–276. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Trock S. C., Meade B. J., Glaser A. L., Ostlund E. N., Lanciotti R. S., Cropp B. C., Kulasekera V., Kramer L. D., Komar N. West Nile virus outbreak among horses in New York State, 1999 and 2000. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001 Jul-Aug;7(4):745–747. doi: 10.3201/eid0704.010427. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Turell M. J., O'Guinn M. L., Dohm D. J., Jones J. W. Vector competence of North American mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) for West Nile virus. J Med Entomol. 2001 Mar;38(2):130–134. doi: 10.1603/0022-2585-38.2.130. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Vaidyanathan R., Edman J. D., Cooper L. A., Scott T. W. Vector competence of mosquitoes (Diptera:Culicidae) from Massachusetts for a sympatric isolate of eastern equine encephalomyelitis virus. J Med Entomol. 1997 May;34(3):346–352. doi: 10.1093/jmedent/34.3.346. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Weiss D., Carr D., Kellachan J., Tan C., Phillips M., Bresnitz E., Layton M., West Nile Virus Outbreak Response Working Group Clinical findings of West Nile virus infection in hospitalized patients, New York and New Jersey, 2000. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001 Jul-Aug;7(4):654–658. doi: 10.3201/eid0704.010409. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]