Kansas awaits invasion of West Nile virus

As Missouri health officials monitor the breadth of West Nile virus in their state, counterparts in neighboring Kansas await the unwelcome arrival as the mosquito-transmitted form of encephalitis creeps westward.

"Everyone was under the assumption there'd be no chance of West Nile getting here until next year," said Townsend Peterson, curator of ornithology at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center. "Now all of a sudden, we don't have that luxury," given the virus' surfacing lately around St. Louis and in Arkansas.

When it comes to the virus arriving in Kansas, he said, it's only a matter of when, not if.

"West Nile is now part of the landscape of America," he said.

Health officials announced Oct. 5 that tests confirmed the virus had been found in five dead crows around St. Louis. The state awaits testing on dead birds found elsewhere, including around Kansas City and Springfield, said Howard Pue, public health veterinarian with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

No human cases of the virus have been reported regionally.

"When you look at the westward progression -- Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana -- you can look at a map and know we're not very far from any of those states," said Gail Hansen, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's public health veterinarian.

West Nile virus causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Host animals usually are birds, but mosquitoes can transfer the virus from birds to horses or other animals, including humans.

Fewer than one in 500 mosquitoes is infected, and fewer than 1 percent of people bitten by an infected mosquito become severely ill with encephalitis.

100 cases of virus

There have been roughly 100 cases of West Nile virus in humans since the disease was found in New York in 1999, federal statistics show. Ten people have died, and officials say the virus with no specific treatment or vaccination has been detected in 27 states and the District of Columbia.

Most people infected with West Nile show no symptoms; others can have fever, head and body aches, skin rash and swollen lymph nodes. People such as the elderly or those with weakened immune systems can suffer muscle weakness, convulsions, coma or death.

The Kansas health department has partnered with the University of Kansas and Kansas State University to identify and track the virus. Dead birds are being monitored through Peterson's museum, with selected birds to be tested by the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

Birds are susceptible to West Nile and typically die within two to three weeks of infection. Dead birds cannot transmit the virus but indicate its presence.

Pue, the Missouri public health veterinarian, said the virus' spread could be slowed by an early frost that will kill off mosquitoes, leaving next spring as the next breeding ground.