WSU Virology

A Cornell University research team’s recent finding of traces of the Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia virus (VHS) in fish inhabiting Wisconsin and Michigan waters of Lake Superior

So far the virus has not been detected in the inland waters of Minnesota.

If you would like to find out the most recent VHS infected sites call the DNR Pathology Lab at 651-259-5096.

Initial laboratory testing in 2009-2010 found blacklegged ticks infected with POW virus in parts of north-central, east-central, and southeastern Minnesota, areas highly endemic for other tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease.

“We anticipate that this will continue and get worse over the next few years,” said Dr. Jim Casey, associate professor of virology at Cornell University. “We fear there may be more widespread presence of the virus.”One of Dr. Casey’s colleagues researching the virus, Dr. Paul Bowser, a professor of aquatic animal medicine, added, “This is a new pathogen and for the first number of years — 4, 5 or 10 years — things are going to be pretty rough, then the animals will become more immune and resistant and the mortalities will decline.”

Get this-- If you are bitten by a tick with Powassan virus, it only takes ~15 minutes to transmit the virus. There are no/rarely any acute signs of illness. So up to three weeks later, allovasudden, you get hella sick. And you have no friggen idea why, because you were bitten by the tick weeks ago, and you probably totally forgot about it. And what is hella sick, exactly? Encephalitis. 10-15% of people die from it. ~50%, even if they survive, have permanent neurological problems. There is no vaccine. There is no treatment. You just either die, and even if you live, the odds are pretty good that you will have life-long problems.

"However, serologic surveys [of Powassan virus IgM] have found an antibody prevalence of 1 to 4 percent, indicating that asymptomatic infection is common."

In mosquitoes, the shortened WNV genomes reduced infection and dissemination rates, and virus titers overall, and were not detected in legs or salivary secretions at 14 or 21 days post-infection. In mice, inoculation with internally deleted genomes did not attenuate pathogenesis relative to full-length or infectious clone derived virus, and shortened genomes were not detected in mice at the time of death.

Genetics researchers at the Lake Erie Research Center at the University of Toledo are working on a test that will speed up that diagnosis to a matter of hours.