West Nile Virus

You've probably been hearing a lot of stories about West Nile virus lately in the news - it's enough to make you want to don your best snowsuit before venturing outdoors. So, let's get up to speed on it for a few minutes. Just in case you've missed the stories, there have been quite a few cases of West Nile in Texas lately, and several in Oklahoma as well. West Nile virus has the potential to make people quite sick, and there is no cure. However, not all cases of West Nile virus have symptoms, and not all are neuroinvasive (affecting your nervous system) - that's good news.

West Nile virus is transmitted to humans by mosquitos in the Aedes or Culex genus. One way to tell if a mosquito is a member of the Aedes genus is to look at it while it is at rest - Aedes mosquitos have a tendency to stick their rear ends up in the air and are also generally larger. These mosquitos actually act as vectors with this disease. They carry it with them and unfortunately share it, while not being affected by it themselves. Birds host this disease, and when a mosquito bites an infected bird, the mosquito carries the disease and infects other birds or humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aedes_albopictus_2.jpg

When a human is infected with West Nile, they can experience symptoms similar to the flu - sweating, headache, and fever, just to name a few. If the virus becomes more severe, the brain and meninges can be dangerously affected, and these are the cases that we tend to hear about in the media.

So, what can you do to protect yourself? For one thing, make sure you have no standing pools of water around your house or on your property. Check out your bird baths and rain barrels, and make sure the water is clean. Stagnant pools of water make fantastic incubators for mosquito eggs and larvae. If you do have some standing water that is not easily changed or removed, mosquito dunks can help to keep larvae from growing. Obviously, mosquito repellent will help too, as well as covering up with clothing.

On that note - come on, fall season! Happy Friday, everyone.