Southeast Missouri State University has been selected as the site of a statewide mosquito testing lab for the coming year.

Under an agreement with the Missouri Department of Health, the lab will conduct mosquito surveillance.

The mosquitoes are being probed in the 3B Safety Lab in the Rhodes Hall of Science. Christina Frazier, Southeast professor of biology, is the project coordinator.

She is no stranger to mosquito research. Last summer, Frazier received more than $7,000 in federal flood relief funds through the Missouri Department of Health to survey mosquitoes gathered from around the state to determine if they were carrying the deadly encephalitis virus.

She also has worked for about six years with the St. Louis County Department of Health Vector Control Section on disease surveillance of mosquitoes.

She said Southeast was selected as the research site because "we have the labs and the skills here and the efficiency of the office of sponsored programs to administer such a large contract."

Mike McCallister, Southeast director of sponsored programs, said the agreement with the Missouri Department of Health for mosquito surveillance is important because it could lead to a permanent lab at the university.

Frazier said this year's agreement with the Missouri Department of Health was launched because of the urgency created by flooding last summer along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

"The flood has created wonderful breeding spots for mosquitoes because of wet places," she said.

Funding for this year's research -- which is covering wages for Frazier, student assistants and equipment -- is being provided by the Federal Flood Relief Act in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control. Other states affected by last summer's flood are conducting similar mosquito research, with the state Department of Health coordinating the effort in Missouri, Frazier said.

The Missouri research, headquartered at Southeast, will continue through at least the end of April 1995.

"Until now, we haven't had that much of a coordinated statewide surveillance effort," she said.

Under the contract, Southeast student assistants and other college students in Missouri, sanitarians and entomology technicians are collecting mosquitoes in: the Cape Girardeau area from Ste. Genevieve to Commerce; the Missouri Bootheel; Kansas City; Jefferson City; St. Louis County; and an area north of St. Louis to Hannibal.

The mosquitoes are then being transferred frozen to the Southeast lab where they are being ground and tested for any presence of St. Louis Encephalitis and Western Equine Encephalitis. St. Louis Encephalitis is so named because St. Louis was, in the early 1930s, the first city where the encephalitis virus was isolated and identified, Frazier said. Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, which can fatally affect the central nervous system.

Symptoms of the virus, which often tend to strike older people, include headaches and fever. Western Equine Encephalitis makes horses ill and also can adversely affect the health of humans, Frazier said.

"If we can find these viruses early on, we can take measures to greatly reduce transfer to the human population," she said, adding it is more cost effective to test mosquitoes in a lab than to perform massive sprayings of mosquito breeding places. "If we can find these viruses when they are in the mosquitoes and birds, hopefully we can stop an epidemic before it starts by targeted vector control efforts."

In addition to this federally funded research, additional limited research is being performed in the Southeast lab to determine if the mosquitoes are carrying Lacrosse Encephalitis and Eastern Equine Encephalitis. Lacrosse Encephalitis is a virus that often affects young children, resulting in fever, headaches and a stiff neck. People who contract the virus often develop severe convulsions in the future, Frazier said. Eastern Equine Encephalitis, like Western Equine Encephalitis, can make horses ill and adversely affect the health of humans.

Frazier said she is expecting "a bumper crop" this summer of mosquitoes -- some of which will be vector mosquitoes that can carry disease -- as a result of the "Great Flood of '93."

"Unless we have a drastic weather change, we should have a bumper mosquito crop this year," she said.

Frazier added that the Mississippi valley region is overdue for a St. Louis Encephalitis outbreak.

"We've been living on borrowed time," she said, explaining that an outbreak of St. Louis Encephalitis normally occurs about every 10 years. The last full-scale nationwide epidemic of St. Louis Encephalitis was in the mid-1970s.

Frazier said she will report her findings to the Missouri Department of Health. If a mosquito believed to be carrying a virus is found, a test will be performed to confirm the finding. Frazier said she then will contact the Missouri Department of Health, which will notify the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colo., which will perform an independent confirmation.

If the Center for Disease Control confirms a case, vector control agents and representatives from government agencies will determine follow-up procedures.