Jul 23, 2009 12:30 pm US/Central
Wisconsin Prof Researches West Nile In Suburbs
Tony Goldberg Says Southwest Chicago Suburbs Have Perfect Conditions For West Nile To Thrive
MADISON, Wis. (CBS) ―
A researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is using the southwest Chicago suburbs as his laboratory to learn the secrets of the West Nile virus.
Tony Goldberg, an epidemiologist and professor at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, said the Chicago area seems to have the perfect conditions for the virus to thrive. He and his team are searching lawns and thickets in the southwest suburbs around Oak Lawn in search of West Nile reservoirs, according to a university news release.
Goldberg and his team have discovered that while certain birds such as crows and blue jays are particularly prone to West Nile infection when bitten by a carrier mosquito, one bird drives infection more than any other.
"In Chicago, there is one bird species that stands out above all others as a driver of West Nile amplification – the robin," Goldberg said in the release. "It is the indisputable super spreader of the virus in the Chicago region."
Goldberg and his team will mount transmitters to robins that will gather information about the mosquitoes that bite them. Younger robins seem to be the most common carriers, he said in the news release.
"While they carry the virus, they seem to be more resistant to the disease than other birds, there are lots of them and they seem to be good at transmitting West Nile at just the right time of year," Goldberg said in the release.
Goldberg's team wants to figure out why some suburban areas are swarming with West Nile, while other parts of North America with similar conditions are not. Atlanta and Madison have similar environmental attributes to the Chicago suburbs, but far fewer cases of the disease, Goldberg said in the release.
The team also wants to find out why some neighborhoods are West Nile hot spots, while others just a couple of miles away are not, the release said.
Next year, Goldberg plans to follow up by tracking the movement of mosquitoes using isotopes in the insects' body chemistry. The chemicals can pinpoint where the insects hatched, and thus, help identify the factors that cause West Nile flare-up.
"If you can find those places and the reasons why disease occurs in one place and not another, that points to obvious avenues for intervention and disease prevention," Goldberg said in the release.
People who get sick with West Nile can develop a fever, aches, swollen glands and a rash, with symptoms taking 3 to 15 days to appear. Those 50 and older are at the greatest risk.
Illinois sees hundreds of cases and several deaths from West Nile each year. The worst year for West Nile in Illinois was 2002, when the state led the nation with 884 cases and 66 deaths.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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