A mosquito-borne virus that has made its way to the U.S. may be causing more serious symptoms than first thought.
Chikungunya starts with fevers and aches, like malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. What distinguishes the virus is that it also brings debilitating joint pain. The pain usually dwindles over the course of a few weeks, though it can leave some people with chronic arthritis.
But a new study in the journal Neurology shows some people with chikungunya developed encephalitis, an infection of the brain that can lead to memory problems, dementia and even death. The study was conducted at the Central University Hospital in Saint Pierre, Reunion Island, off Madagas
“We still don’t know why there’s this wide spectrum of disease,” she says. “Why some people get relatively mild infections, with just fever, no joint pain, no encephalitis, right, and then go on to do well without any complications — and other people … end up with very severe complications.”
And, LaBeaud says, the virus is not so far from home.
Several years after the Reunion Island outbreak, chikungunya was discovered in the Americas — first in the Caribbean in 2013 and then Mexico and Florida in 2014. The summer it was discovered in Florida, about a dozen people got the virus from mosquitoes in the southeastern part of the state.
“We have 9 million visitors per year going to the Caribbean, and so we’ve seen lots and lots of imported cases of chikungunya,” LaBeaud says.
There is currently no vaccine or treatment for chikungunya — but people who do contract the virus become immune to it. A team of researchers at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has designed an experimental vaccine that is now being tested.