A new study conducted by the researchers at the University of Florida has brought to light a new disease for humanity to fret about. The researchers involved in the study said that a new virus carried by mosquitoes, which previously infected animals only, has now started infecting human beings also.
A case of this type was first detected in a sixteen years old boy. As said by Glenn Morris, the Director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida, the infection by the Keystone virus was confirmed after the boy went through a series of analysis and tests.
According to the reports, the teenager got infected with the virus during the course of a band camp in Florida last year. The boy later experienced fever and heavy rashes on the body. The doctors initially could not detect the reason behind the ailments of the boy and a series of tests for various types of pathogens failed.
Morris said, “We couldn’t identify what was going on.” He further explained, “We screened this with all the standard approaches and it literally took a year and a half of sort of dogged laboratory work to figure out what this virus was.”
The Keystone virus was discovered for the first time in northwestern region of Tampa in the year 1964. Since then this virus has been detected in the animals along the coastal areas spread across Texas and the Chesapeake Bay. However, till today there wasn’t any method of examining human beings for the virus, which is commonly spread by the Aedes atlanticus. The Aedes atlanticus reportedly is a very common mosquito of Florida and is an associate of the insect which is known to carry the Zika virus.
According to the scientists involved in the study of this case, the Keystone virus is a member of a classification, which could cause encephalitis in human beings and animals. Encephalitis reportedly is an acute condition of brain inflammation. Morris believes that this virus has already infected many people in that region. The researcher said in a statement, “There is a reasonable chance that there are a number of cases out there.”
