A rare virus infection has appeared in the central United States, a team of doctors has just reported. The virus causes fevers, a drop in the blood's infection-fighting white cells and a reduction in the blood platelets(血小板). Up to now, there have been eight confirmed cases. Seven men became very sick with the disease but recovered. The eighth man died.
The disease was first noticed in June, 2009. Two Missouri farmers came to the hospital. They reported headaches, nausea, high fevers, and diarrhea (腹泻). And they were very, very tired. Blood tests showed the men had low white-blood-cell counts. Both men reported they had been recently bitten by ticks(蜱). The first man said his wife removed a tick from his body the day before his fever began. The second farmer had been "ticked" a lot. He told doctors he had averaged 20 tick bites a day for almost two weeks. His last tick bite had been about three days before his fever struck.
Ticks spread many diseases, so the doctors tested for common ones. Their tests didn't turn up anything. Antibiotics(抗生素) failed to help. But that was not surprising as it turned out that both men were infected with a virus.
Although doctors guessed the virus came from the bite of an infected tick, they couldn't be sure. So Harry Savage of the CDC(Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) and his colleagues hunted ticks at 12 places, including the farms belonging to the first two Missouri patients. In all, they collected 56,428 of the tiny animals. There were three different species of ticks in their collection. But the result is still unknown. Get to know more news, please click here.
