The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the discovery of a new virus that most likely led to the death of a previously healthy man in eastern Kansas.
The man fell ill in late spring of 2014 and sought medical care because of a history of tick bites, fever, and fatigue, the CDC reported.
The patient was found to be experiencing thrombocytopenia and leukopenia, which is a loss of blood platelets and white blood cells. After receiving doxycycline for what at the time was believed to be a tick-borne illness, his condition failed to improve. Soon after, the man developed multiorgan failure and died 11 days after the onset of the illness from cardiopulmonary arrest.
The patient's death was mysterious because molecular and serologic testing did not find evidence of a known tick-borne illness. Further testing revealed the presence of another virus, and sequencing and phylogenetic analysis identified it as a previously-unknown member of the genus Thogotovirus. This is the first time a virus in this group has ever been found to cause human illness in the United States, and only the eight across the entire globe. The virus has been named Bourbon virus, after the county where the patient lived.
Viruses in this group have been linked to ticks and mosquitos in certain regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa there is a chance Bourbon virus was also spread through a tick or mosquito bite. This is further backed up by the fact that the patient received several tick bites in the days before falling ill. The researchers are now working in a lab to gain insight into the virus and how it is contracted.
"The discovery of Bourbon virus, as well as the recent discoveries of Heartland virus in Missouri and severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome viruses in China, leads CDC researchers to believe that other undiscovered viruses are likely causing people to get sick," the CDC stated.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
