A potentially deadly type of typhus carried by chiggers was first detected in the United States.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that chiggers – also called thrombiculid mites or blueberry bugs – in North Carolina parks are infected with the bacteria that causes typhus.
Typhoid fever could cause severe multiple organ failure if not treated promptly.
The disease has a mortality rate of as much as 70% without medical attention, in accordance with the report.
The disease had previously only been seen in the so-called Tsutsugamushi Triangle, an area of the Asia-Pacific region named after the Orientia tsutsugamushi bacterium that causes the disease.
“That is the first time [scrub typhus] detected in a free-living chigger [mites] in the USA,” Kaiying Chen, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, said the Every day Mail.
Mites carrying the bacteria O. tsutsugamushi have been found throughout North Carolina, from the coastal area at Merchants Millpond State Park to Morrow Mountain State Park further west.
“Clinicians in this region must be vigilant for possible cases of human disease arising from the Orient [species] infection” in accordance with CDC cable, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Along with North Carolina, the disease has recently been discovered in Chile and parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Scrub typhus is spread to humans through the bites of infected chiggers, that are the larval types of the mite. The bite mark may appear like a small cigarette burn.
Symptoms of brush typhus normally appear inside 10 days of being bitten and will include fever, headache, body aches, and rash.
The infection can often be misdiagnosed as influenza and sometimes as a tick-borne disease reminiscent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, in accordance with Becker’s Clinical Leadership & Infection Control.
Spotted typhus may be easily treated with the antibiotic doxycycline if detected early, In accordance with the CDC.
The spread of typhus follows the spread of other tropical diseases in more temperate climates. Five latest cases of malaria in the US are of concern to officials because they were locally acquired, meaning a mosquito in the US carried the disease.