Dengue Fever No Longer Just A Visitor To Florida Keys [View all]

[steve2470]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/12/174142169/dengue-fever-no-longer-just-a-visitor-to-florida-keys

If you're heading down to the Florida Keys for spring break, pack bug spray and long-sleeve shirts.

After a 60-year hiatus, the mosquito-borne illness dengue fever has now officially re-established itself there.

People infected during a recent outbreak in Florida didn't catch the virus abroad but rather got a strain that's unique to Key West, virologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report Wednesday in the journal Emerging Infectious Disease.

The virus has been circulating around the Key West population for at least two years, the researchers say, and it has evolved its own genetic fingerprint, distinct from dengue in Central America and the Caribbean.