Mosquitoes Carry Painful Chikungunya Virus To Americas

The patient showed up at the University of Miami Hospital feverish and hobbled by joint pain, a rash spreading across her face, and was presumed to be suffering from lupus or severe rheumatoid arthritis.

But in talking to the middle-aged woman last week, doctors realized that her symptoms and recent history of travel to the Dominican Republic added up to a different diagnosis: chikungunya, an infectious disease carried by the same mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.  Chikungunya (pronounced chick-un-GOON-ya) has plagued other parts of the world—particularly Asia and Africa—for decades, becoming more prevalent in recent years. But it arrived in the Caribbean only in December and has already infected as many as 250,000 people there.

The virus is generally not lethal and can't pass from person to person. But the pain it brings can be horrible—some who have weathered its wrath have said they wished the virus had killed them. In rare cases, the agony can last for months or even years.

Public health officials in the Caribbean are struggling to contain the outbreak, in part because of the difficulty of limiting mosquito breeding grounds and because the disease is so new to the area.  Paola Lichtenberger, director of the Tropical Medicine Program at the University of Miami, says she is sure the epidemic is more widespread than official numbers suggest simply because making the diagnosis is so difficult.  Public health officials in the U.S. and around the world, meanwhile, are tracking cases carefully and encouraging people in affected areas to take precautions to avoid infections and to clean up areas of standing water...