Posts or Comments 28 March 2024

Mosquitoes &NTDs Bill Brieger | 20 Aug 2016 11:02 am

Mosquito-Borne and Tick-Borne Illness in Florida: Importance of Surveillance

Class members from the course “Social and Behavioral Foundations of Primary Health Care” at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health write a policy advocacy blog as part of their assignments. Here we are sharing the blog posted by “jleblan5jhmiedu“. read more on this and other SBFPHC blog posts by clicking here. This posting is particularly relevant today on World Mosquito Day.

Vector-borne diseases make up some of the more common infections throughout the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges mosquito-borne denque mosqdiseases, such as West Nile Virus, and tick-borne infections, such as Lyme disease, have a great impact on the United States. These vectors have found favor in climate change as they continuing to breed and pose a public health risk; carrying infectious agents that may be transmitted to humans through a bloodmeal.

In 2014, the State of Florida Department of Health published their mosquito borne diseases surveillance guidebook. Within these guidelines, specific mosquito-borne infections were addressed in regards to both detecting and preventing such diseases. Unfortunately, since this publication, the Zika virus outbreak developed and was found to have recently reached Miami-Dade county in Florida, where locally transmitted cases were confirmed. Given these locally acquired infections in Florida, the surveillance guidelines should be updated accordingly.

FL Zika

Number of Florida Acquired Zika Virus (gray line: per million)

While the Northeastern regions of the US are known to have their “tick season” in the Spring and Summer, Florida’s climate allows for a year-long risk of contracting a tick-borne diease. The standard lab diauos in newsgnostic criteria for Lyme disease, the ELISA, detects antibodies against the bacterium, Borelia burgdorferi sensu stricto. However, it has continued to demonstrate poor sensitivity and overall reliability. Research from the University of North Florida has identified different strains of Borrelia that cause disease in humans. Thus, should one be infected with one of the different strains of Borrelia, one’s test is likely to be negative despite having actual disease. In recent years, Florida was found to have a 140% increase in Lyme disease cases since 1993 while reports of other tick-borne diseases have also increased. Hence, Florida researchers and public health professionals must partner together to revise and implement more up-to-date/accurate screening and awareness for vector-borne diseases.

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