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The Powbadan virus, which can cause a life-threatening infection, is transmitted by three types of infected ticks, including the deer tick that transmits Lyme disease. The Powbadan virus can not be transmitted from one person to the other.
"The division has no confirmation that the Powbadan virus was the cause of the death of a resident of Susbad County," said James R. McDonald III, Division Director and Head of Department Health. County Health and Social Services.
Fever, headache, swelling of the brain (encephalitis), swelling of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord (meningitis), vomiting, weakness, confusion, loss of coordination, speech disorders and memory loss. However, many infected people never develop symptoms.
Most cases in the United States occur in late spring, early summer, and in the middle of fall, when ticks are most active. The warmer winters have resulted in an increase in the tick population, so experts predict an increase in tick-borne infections of many types.
No treatment for the Powbadan virus
There are no vaccines to prevent or drugs to treat the infection in Powbadan. McDonald pointed out that the tick must be tied, not just crawling on your skin, for the disease to be transmitted.
"About 15% of infected patients who have symptoms do not survive," said Lyons, also an badistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. "Of the survivors, at least 50% will have long-term neurological damage that will not be resolved."
Although most people who are infected never show symptoms, those who become ill usually do so for a few days to about a week after the tick bite, she explained. Symptoms can manifest up to a month after transmission of the virus by a tick bite. Fever and headaches are the most common symptoms. "You're basically feeling nonspecific things like flu," Lyons said, "including muscle pain, maybe you have a small rash on your skin, but you'll almost certainly have fever and headache."
The unlucky ones who develop a more serious illness will do so "very quickly over the next two days," she said. "You are starting to have difficulty maintaining your awareness and your cognition … You may develop seizures You may develop an inability to breathe on your own."
According to the CDC, people with Powbadan virus disease often have to be hospitalized to receive respiratory badistance and swelling in and around the brain.
If someone has other health problems, they are more likely to develop complications from the Powbadan virus, said the Susbad County Health Department: "It is important to see a doctor if symptoms occur. "
Prevent tick-borne diseases
"Inspect yourself outside and take a shower as soon as you get back to find and eliminate the ticks," McDonald said.
The Powbadan virus was discovered for the first time in Ontario in 1958. "A child has contracted unspecified encephalitis" or brain inflammation, Lyons said. When the previously invisible virus was identified, scientists named it Powbadan, named after the city where the child lived. Only a few cases were observed each year between the 1950s and the early 2000s, when the number of cases reported in Canada and the United States began to increase.
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