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Tag Archives: heartland
New Tick-Borne Disease in the Midwest and Southern US: Heartland Virus
- Heartland virus disease is a relatively new tick-borne illness that was discovered in 2009.
- The virus is spread by the lone star tick in the American South and Midwest.
- Little is known about this emerging disease, but experts are working on tick surveillance.
In 2009, Dr. Scott Folk treated two patients in western Missouri who had fallen ill after getting bitten by ticks.
Most tick-borne diseases, from Lyme disease to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, share similar flu-like symptoms at their onset. The patients in Missouri experienced chills, fever, and headaches, Folk explained in a radio interview with NPR affiliate KCUR.
The doctor thought they had ehrlichiosis, a bacterial infection that is spread by a common tick species in the area. But the patients didn’t get better after taking
antibiotics
, and lab testing revealed that they had a previously unseen viral infection.
The new virus was named Heartland virus, after Heartland Regional Medical Center, where the patients were diagnosed. In the 13 years since its discovery, more than 50 cases of Heartland virus disease have been identified in people living in the southern and midwestern US.
Not much is known about the virus compared with other tick-borne diseases, but doctors and scientists working in the region are collecting ticks to learn more.
“This is not a pathogen that is going to take over the world, so there’s no reason to panic at this point,” said Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an associate professor who heads a team studying vector-borne diseases at Emory University. “We as scientists are trying to do what we couldn’t do with COVID, which is know as much as we can about the virus before it becomes a problem.”
The lone star tick can spread the Heartland virus, among other diseases
Cases of Heartland virus disease have been reported in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The virus spreads via the bite of the lone star tick, a species widely distributed throughout the eastern US, according to the CDC. The tick is most common in the southeastern states, but it has spread westward and as far north as Canada as temperatures have warmed, Vazquez-Prokopec told Insider.
The lone star tick, identifiable by a single white dot on the back of adult female ticks, is also known to spread other viruses and bacteria that cause more common infections, such as ehrlichiosis. Unlike blacklegged ticks, this species does not carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
Only one case of Heartland virus disease has been identified in Georgia, where Vazquez-Prokopec works, to date — diagnosed posthumously in a Georgia resident who died of an unknown disease in 2005. In that county, researchers at Emory’s Prokopec Laboratory recently collected nearly 10,000 ticks. About one in every 2,000 lone star ticks collected carried the virus.
Symptoms include fevers and muscle pain
The first Heartland virus patients identified in Missouri were hospitalized with high fevers, diarrhea, muscle pains, and low counts of white blood cells and platelets.
Other symptoms of Heartland virus disease include fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, and nausea, according to the CDC. Because the illness presents similarly to many tick-borne diseases and other viral infections, the only way to diagnose it is to see a healthcare provider who can order a test.
Infectious disease experts said the actual burden of illness is likely much higher than the CDC’s official count of 50. In northwestern Missouri, researchers estimated that between 1% and 4% of the population had antibodies proving they were exposed to Heartland virus, based on donor blood testing done in 2013. At the time, only two cases of the illness had been confirmed in humans.
“That’s why we know that the 50 cases is an underestimate, because we’re not capturing the whole spectrum of illness,” Vazquez-Prokopec told Insider. “People might be sick and not go to the doctor, or they might be going to the doctor and not being tested for the virus.”
Regardless of the threat posed by Heartland virus, people should take precautions to avoid ticks when they go outside during the spring, summer, and fall, he added.
Donbas: Why Putin wants Ukraine’s ravaged heartland
A Russian victory in the region would appall the West but could salvage Putin’s war aims, while a defeat could cement his invasion as a historic failure. Either way, it is almost certain to devastate yet more of the Donbas region, a historically and culturally significant place whose proximity to Russia has dictated much of its turbulent existence.
Those who have lived in and studied the region describe it as an independent and gritty center of industry that has remained suspicious of outside forces for decades.
But the waves of conflict there since 2014 have reshaped and wounded its cities, and it is along its line of contact that both the Ukrainian and Russian military are most dug in — making for a familiar but unpredictable new phase of war.
‘Fiercely independent’
Chimneys, factories and coal fields have dotted the landscape of Donbas for decades, and since its two major cities were founded — Donetsk by a Welsh ironmaster in 1869, and Luhansk seven decades earlier by a Scottish industrialist — industry has been the lifeblood of the region.
The name Donbas is itself a portmanteau of the Donets Coal Basin, and throughout most of the 20th century it served an outsized role as the industrial heartland of the Soviet Union, pumping out coal in vast quantities.
“The Soviet Union intensively developed the Donbas as an industrial center,” said Markian Dobczansky, an associate at Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute. “It was a place that set the tempo of Soviet industrialization.”
It was a place, too, of “extremely high-stakes industrial production, and repression,” Dobczansky adds. “Terror was present under Soviet rule. Repression happened all over the Soviet Union, but it happened intensely in the Donbas.” Suspicion, arrests and show trials were rife.
A rise in steel and metal manufacturing, the creation of a railroad and the development of a shipping industry in the port city of Mariupol diversified Donbas beyond its coal mining roots.
But in the three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the region’s economic might has shriveled. “In the 1990s, the Donbas saw the floor drop out economically,” Rory Finnin, associate professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge, told CNN.
A decline in living standards and rampant poverty plagued the region during its initial transition from communism, Finnin said, and Donbas is now often likened to the Rust Belt regions of the United States, where once-thriving heartland locations have struggled to adapt. But an upturn in fortunes followed the turn of the century; Donbas remains Ukraine’s industrial epicenter, complimenting the agricultural production of the rest of the country.
While prosperity in the region has wavered, one steadfast characteristic of its inhabitants has not. The people of Donbas have and remain “fiercely independent,” Finnin said. “It marches to the beat of its own drum.”
The region’s long-standing industrial pull has attracted people from across Eastern Europe over the past century, and it has had strong social and economic ties to neighboring Russia as well as to the rest of Ukraine. Unlike much of central and western Ukraine, which had historically changed hands between various European empires, Donbas spent most of the past millennium under the control of Russia.
In the country’s only post-Soviet census in 2001, just over a half of the population of Donbas was made up of ethnic Ukrainians and a third of ethnic Russians. Russian is by some distance the most widely spoken language in Donbas, unlike in western Ukraine. But the country as a whole has a tradition of multilingualism and the connection between language and national identity is tenuous there, experts say.
The cities of Donbas lie “far away from the metropolitan centers, (and) far away from the big cities” in central and western Ukraine, said Dobczansky. “People could flee to the Donbas and get lost.” Western-influenced, pro-European politics has typically not been embraced in Donbas as it has in the west of Ukraine.
That sense of disconnect from the capital Kyiv and other metropolitan centers has given rise to a vast collection of local movements, and was the backdrop upon which pro-Russian separatists attempted to seize control following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.
But Finnin and others warn “it’s important not to fall to notions that the Donbas is pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian,” a concept that has been stirred up relentlessly by the Kremlin since 2014 but is roundly debunked by experts.
In an exclusive CNN poll conducted by Savanta/ComRes shortly before Russia’s invasion began, people in the easternmost region of Ukraine, which includes Donbas, mostly rejected the idea that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people,” and comprehensively disagreed that the two states should become one country.
Fewer than one in five people there felt that way, compared to about a third of Russians who did, demonstrating the lack of desire to change national allegiance despite the region’s longstanding cultural connections with Russia.
“(Pro-Russian) separatism prior to 2014 was a distinctly minority position,” and no organized movement existed, Dobczansky said. Opinion polls — and the region’s own vote for independence in Ukraine’s 1991 referendum — affirmed Donbas’ desire to leave Soviet-era allegiances behind.
“People would have a very strong sense of being a coal miner, or a metal worker, or being in the proletariat,” he added. “People (also) had a sense of being a part of the Ukrainian republic, but the idea was that the Donbas transcended national identities.”
What Donbas means to Putin
Despite its move into independence along with the rest of Ukraine in 1991, Donbas has maintained a place in the psyche of Russian leadership.
A famous Soviet propaganda poster from 1921 dubbed Donbas “the heart of Russia,” depicting the region as a beating organ with vessels stretching across the Russian empire. Before then, the region was part of the concept of “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, a term given to territories towards the west of which the Russian empire had expansionist ideas.
Cities like Luhansk and Donetsk are historically “places that (Russians) could see a certain version of themselves,” Finnin said.
And that historical image could still persist inside Putin’s own worldview, experts suggest.
Observers have often suggested that Putin’s desired endgame is to rebuild the Soviet Union in which he first rose up the ranks. Anna Makanju, former director for Russia at the US National Security Council, last month suggested that Putin “believes he is like the czars,” the imperial dynasties that ruled Russia for centuries, “potentially called by God in order to control and restore the glory of the Russian empire.”
But such a project could not be attempted without an effort to recapture Donbas, given its emotional resonance as the Russian empire’s industrial backbone. “It’s symbolically very important; the Donbas supplied the entire Soviet Union with raw materials,” Dobczansky said.
It is in that context that Putin has refocused his stuttering invasion on the region where his conflict with Ukraine began eight years ago. US intelligence intercepts suggest Putin has refocused his war strategy on achieving some kind of victory in the east by May 9, Russia’s “Victory Day” that marks the Nazi surrender in World War II.
“There’s every possibility that Putin will move now to effectively bisect Ukraine; that will give him enough to be able to declare a victory domestically, and allay his critics that this has been a botched invasion,” said Samir Puri, a senior fellow in urban security and hybrid warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who worked as a ceasefire observer in Donbas between 2014 and 2015.
“Taking the Donbas (would be) a consolation prize, because Kyiv is now out of Russia’s military grasp, but it’s a good consolation prize,” Puri said.
Eight years of conflict
Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the occupation of parts of Donbas by Russian-backed rebels in 2014 brought to a crashing halt a period of increasing prosperity in the region.
War broke out in 2014 after Russian-backed rebels seized government buildings in towns and cities across eastern Ukraine. Intense fighting left portions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the hands of Russian-backed separatists.
The separatist-controlled areas in Donbas became known as the Luhansk and the Donetsk People’s Republics. The Ukrainian government in Kyiv asserts the two regions are, in effect, temporarily Russian-occupied. The self-declared republics have not recognized by any governments, other than Russia and its close ally Syria, and the Ukrainian government has steadfastly refused to talk directly with the leaders of either.
But on the ground, living amid conflict became a way of life. “Eastern Ukraine residents were living in a twilight zone — they were in the front line of a geopolitical despite, and there was a sense of powerlessness,” said Puri, who spent time on each side of the line of contact while observing the ceasefire.
More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict in Donbas since 2014, including 3,000 civilians caught up in the conflict. Ukraine says that since 2014, almost 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with over half of the registered internally displaced persons staying in the areas of Donbas that remained under Ukrainian control and about 160,000 resettling in the wider Kyiv region.
Russia has meanwhile aggressively attempted to stir up separatist feeling in the region, which it has then pointed to as a justification for invading. Russian passports were offered to residents from 2019, and Kremlin messaging both in Russia and in separatist-held parts of Donbas has heavily played up notions of ethnic Russians being targeted.
“In propaganda since 2014, the Donbas has become a sacrificial lamb in Russian narratives,” Dobczansky said.
“It’s the place where the Russians have cultivated a cult of victimhood. They’ve managed to turn their own fomenting of a war into a narrative of victimhood at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists,” he added. “They hammer this point home.”
That pretext ultimately led to Putin, two days before he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, declaring the Donetsk and Luhansk regions independent in an opening salvo to his war on the country.
A new Russian assault
Whether the battle for Donbas will be the final chapter of Russia’s war, or merely its next phase, remains to be seen. But by zeroing in on the region, Putin has brought his assault on Ukraine full circle.
“The Donbas was the frontline for eight years, so the military positions on both sides are extraordinarily well-fortified,” Dobczansky said.
The secessionist conflict in Donbas has been costly but stagnant since the initial surges of pro-Russian forces in 2014; the lines of the conflict have barely moved in several years, with trenches running along the point of contact from the southern coast to the Ukrainian-Russian border north of Luhansk.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this month that “the battle for Donbas will remind you of the Second World War, with large operations, maneuvers, involvement of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes, (and) artillery.”
“This will not be a local operation based on what we see in Russia’s preparations,” Kuleba said at a news conference in Brussels.
The terrain and climate of the region does not contrast dramatically with the rest of Ukraine, but conflict there contains its own unique features.
“It’s going to be very different to what people have been seeing in Kyiv and Mariupol,” Puri said. “The Ukrainian frontline mixes urban and rural territory … some of the urban territories that Ukraine (will be defending) were already devastated in eight years of shell fire.”
Already, populous cities like Mariupol have been decimated by Russian bombardments. A similar fate is likely for other urban centers in Donbas, and evacuations have been urged from those in the path of expected Russian advances.
Now Russia will likely attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east and can attack from northern cities where they have amassed troops, like Izium, as well as from the south and east. A battle for control of Sloviansk has been anticipated, given its strategically significant position in the path of a potential Russian land corridor.
Being closer to Russia and Crimea may also ease some of the supply issues that blighted Russia’s doomed assaults on central Ukraine.
As Russian columns head towards Donbas, they will no doubt encounter Ukrainian forces that have intimate knowledge of the towns and cities they have been defending for nearly a decade. Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, and much of the army’s top guard have on-the-ground experience fighting in the region after 2014, and several Ukrainian officials have described the battle for Donbas as the pivotal next phase of the war.
“It’s more comfortable, militarily, for the Russians to fight a war in the Donbas than it was in Kyiv, Sumy, or Kharkiv,” said Dobczansky. “But it’s also the place where the Ukrainian army’s most experienced and fortified units are located … so they’ll face the most severe resistance.”
Researchers warn of tick-borne Heartland virus in US. What to know about the viral pathogen
The Heartland virus is circulating in ticks in Georgia, researchers warn.
A new study published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases last week and led by researchers from Emory University analyzed virus samples from ticks collected in central Georgia. But the Heartland virus, first identified in Missouri in 2009, has been documented in multiple states across the Midwest and Southeast.
But what does that mean for your next hiking or camping trip? Is it time to be on the lookout for ticks that could carry the virus?
Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist at the University of Kentucky, told USA TODAY that so-called tick seasons can vary across the United States, but “anytime when you’re outside from April into August and September, that’s kind of the high tick season for a lot of the eastern and southeastern United States.”
“You should be thinking about them almost any time of the year. It’s something that should be on everybody’s mind,” he said. He explained that blacklegged deer ticks, the main vectors for Lyme disease, are active as adults from October to May, as long as temperatures don’t dip below freezing.
Here’s what you need to know about the Heartland virus and steps you can take to protect you and your family from tick-borne illnesses.
Video: What to do if you get a tick bite
What is the Heartland virus?
The Heartland virus spreads to people from an infected tick. As of January 2021, more than 50 cases of Heartland virus disease have been reported in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Heartland virus is one of the many diseases that could be vectored by ticks,” Larson said. “It’s a viral pathogen, which is different than we see with a lot of tick-borne illnesses, which are often bacteria.”
Nation: How to stay safe from 5 common but dangerous bugs this summer
Ticks and tick-borne diseases: How to battle these bloodsuckers
How do you get it?
Humans can get the Heartland virus after being bitten by an infected tick. The Lone Star tick can transmit the virus, but it isn’t known if other tick species can transmit it, according to the CDC.
“If you are bitten by a Lone Star tick, there is a possibility that they could have the Heartland virus if they’ve picked it up from another host, and then they could vector it into you,” Larson said.
What are Heartland virus symptoms?
Most people with Heartland virus report fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, nausea, diarrhea and muscle pain, according to the CDC.
Dr. Ross Boyce, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, told USA TODAY that certain groups, such as elderly, immunocompromised or young people, could be at higher risk for a severe, and even life-threatening, disease from tick-borne illnesses.
New COVID variant: Here’s what you need to know about BA.2
But he noted that it’s possible only the most severe cases of Heartland virus have been reported.
“With a lot of these insect-borne viruses, whether it’s Dengue or West Nile, there’s probably a huge iceberg under the surface, under the water, as far as the number of people who get infected that either don’t have symptoms or have only mild symptoms,” Boyce said.
Are there vaccines to prevent the virus? What about other preventions or treatments?
There are no vaccines or medications that prevent or treat a Heartland virus infection, according to the CDC.
Experts recommend that people avoid tick bites in general to protect against the Heartland virus and try to find a tick on your body early, before it attaches. People can use insect repellants, check their body and their child’s body for ticks and more.
What’s everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
“Ticks are smart, and they’ve evolved such that they’re going to move to places on your body that you don’t naturally see, so behind your knees and your hairline, under your armpits,” Boyce said. “That’s why it’s often helpful to have someone else look.”
He encourages people to take precautions when going outside, including wearing long pants. The CDC advises treating clothing with the insecticide permethrin and using Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents.
What should you do if you see a tick?
If you see a tick on your clothes or shoes and it has not bitten you, you “don’t have to worry about pathogens,” Larson said.
“It has to actually feed on you for any disease vectoring to occur,” he said. “I would just check the rest of your body to make sure you don’t find anybody that’s making a meal out of you. And if you don’t, then you’re in the clear.”
But if a tick has bitten you, “the longer it’s on you, the more likely it is to have passed the pathogen from its guts into your body,” Larson said.
“The best thing to do is to take a pair of pointy tweezers, get as close to your skin as possible and grip the head area of the tick and then pull straight up, steadily but not with a jerking motion,” he said.
Reviewed: 16 ways to kill spiders, flies, and other bugs
“You don’t want to break any parts of the tick off into your body, which could lead to other infections, but you do want to get it out of the skin. Once it’s out of there, you can put it in some rubbing alcohol or into hot soapy water, anything that you want to do to try and kill it.”
Larson warned against tactics like holding a match head to a tick or pouring alcohol on it.
“When you do that while the tick is feeding on you, you are agitating it, and you’re increasing the likelihood that it could sort of regurgitate into you. And that could increase the likelihood of disease transmission happening.
“Here in Kentucky, I’ve had people tell me, ‘Oh, I pour bourbon on it to try and get it off.’ That’s a waste of good bourbon.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What are Heartland virus symptoms? And how do you remove a tick?
Researchers warn of tick-borne Heartland virus in US. What to know about the viral pathogen
The Heartland virus is circulating in ticks in Georgia, researchers warned in a study published last week.
The findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases and led by researchers from Emory University, analyzed virus samples from ticks collected in central Georgia. But the Heartland virus, first identified in Missouri in 2009, has been documented in multiple states across the Midwest and Southeast.
But what does that mean for your next hiking or camping trip? Is it time to be on the lookout for ticks that could carry the virus?
Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist at the University of Kentucky, explained to USA TODAY that so-called tick seasons can vary across the United States, but “anytime when you’re outside from April into August and September, that’s kind of the high tick season for a lot of the eastern and southeastern United States.”
“You should be thinking about them almost any time of the year. It’s something that should be on everybody’s mind,” he said, explaining that blacklegged deer ticks, the main vectors for Lyme disease, are active as adults from October to May, as long as temperatures don’t dip below freezing.
Here’s what you need to know about the Heartland virus and steps you can take to protect you and your family from tick-borne illnesses.
What is the Heartland virus?
The Heartland virus spreads to people from an infected tick. As of January 2021, more than 50 cases of Heartland virus disease have been reported in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Heartland virus is one of the many diseases that could be vectored by ticks,” Larson said. “It’s a viral pathogen, which is different than we see with a lot of tick-borne illnesses, which are often bacteria.”
Nation: How to stay safe from 5 common but dangerous bugs this summer
Ticks and tick-borne diseases: How to battle these bloodsuckers
How do you get it?
Humans can get the Heartland virus after being bitten by an infected tick. The Lone Star tick can transmit the virus, but it isn’t known if other tick species can transmit it, according to the CDC.
“If you are bitten by a Lone Star tick, there is a possibility that they could have the Heartland virus if they’ve picked it up from another host, and then they could vector it into you,” Larson said.
What are Heartland virus symptoms?
Most people with Heartland virus report fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, nausea, diarrhea and muscle pain, according to the CDC.
Dr. Ross Boyce, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, told USA TODAY that certain groups, such as elderly, immunocompromised or young people, could be at higher risk for a severe, and even life-threatening, disease from tick-borne illnesses.
New COVID variant: Here’s what you need to know about BA.2
But he noted that it’s possible only the most severe cases of Heartland virus have been reported.
“With a lot of these insect-borne viruses, whether it’s Dengue or West Nile, there’s probably a huge iceberg under the surface, under the water, as far as the number of people who get infected that either don’t have symptoms or have only mild symptoms,” Boyce said.
Are there vaccines to prevent the virus? What about other preventions or treatments?
There are no vaccines or medications that prevent or treat a Heartland virus infection, according to the CDC.
Experts recommend that people avoid tick bites in general to protect against the Heartland virus and try to find a tick on your body early, before it attaches. People can use insect repellants, check their body and their child’s body for ticks and more.
What’s everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
“Ticks are smart, and they’ve evolved such that they’re going to move to places on your body that you don’t naturally see, so behind your knees and your hairline, under your armpits,” Boyce said. “That’s why it’s often helpful to have someone else look.”
He encourages people to take precautions when going outside, including wearing long pants. The CDC advises treating clothing with the insecticide permethrin and using Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents.
What should you do if you see a tick?
If you see a tick on your clothes or shoes and it has not bitten you yet, you “don’t have to worry about pathogens,” Larson explained.
“It has to actually feed on you for any disease vectoring to occur,” he said. “I would just check the rest of your body to make sure you don’t find anybody that’s making a meal out of you. And if you don’t, then you’re in the clear.”
But if a tick has bitten you, “the longer it’s on you, the more likely it is to have passed the pathogen from its guts into your body,” Larson said.
“The best thing to do is to take a pair of pointy tweezers, get as close to your skin as possible and grip the head area of the tick and then pull straight up, steadily but not with a jerking motion,” he said.
Reviewed: 16 ways to kill spiders, flies, and other bugs
“You don’t want to break any parts of the tick off into your body, which could lead to other infections, but you do want to get it out of the skin. Once it’s out of there, you can put it in some rubbing alcohol or into hot soapy water, anything that you want to do to try and kill it,” he added.
Larson warned against tactics like holding a match head to a tick or pouring alcohol on it.
“When you do that while the tick is feeding on you, you are agitating it, and you’re increasing the likelihood that it could sort of regurgitate into you. And that could increase the likelihood of disease transmission happening,” he said.
“Here in Kentucky, I’ve had people tell me ‘Oh, I pour bourbon on it to try and get it off,’” he added. “That’s a waste of good bourbon.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What are Heartland virus symptoms? And how do you remove a tick?
Mysterious Heartland virus shows up in Georgia ticks
Heartland virus, a rare and potentially fatal virus first identified in Missouri in 2009, has now been detected in ticks in Georgia, according to a new study.
The study researchers from Emory University sampled nearly 10,000 lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) in central Georgia, finding the Heartland virus in about 1 out of every 2,000 ticks sampled, they said in a statement.
Although researchers knew that at least one person had died from an infection with Heartland virus in Georgia over a decade ago, the new study confirms that the virus is actively circulating in ticks in the state.
“Heartland is an emerging infectious disease that is not well understood,” study senior author Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an associate professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences, said in the statement. “We’re trying to get ahead of this virus by learning everything that we can about it before it potentially becomes a bigger problem.”
Related: Why do ticks spread so many diseases?
The virus is spread through tick bites. So far, lone star ticks are the only species of tick found to spread the virus to people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since the virus was first detected 13 years ago in the U.S., about 50 cases have been reported in 11 Midwestern and Southern U.S. states. Symptoms of the infection include fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, nausea, diarrhea, and muscle or joint pain; and many people with the virus are hospitalized, according to the CDC.
After the virus was identified, researchers performed a retrospective analysis for cases and detected a single fatal case in Georgia from 2005. In addition, white-tailed deer in the area have been found to carry antibodies against the virus, suggesting they’ve been infected. But the new study is the first to confirm the virus in ticks in Georgia. Ticks carrying the virus have been found in five other states, the researchers said.
Detecting the virus in ticks has been challenging because of its low infection rate in the tick population, the researchers said. In the new study, published Wednesday (March 16) in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the researchers collected 9,294 lone-star ticks from three counties (Baldwin, Jones and Putnam) in 2018 and 2019. They divided the ticks into groups of adults (five per group) and nymphs (25 per group), and then “crushed and put [each group] into a solution to test for the presence of the Heartland virus,” the statement said. Three samples containing ticks from Jones and Putnam Counties tested positive for the Heartland virus.
An analysis of the viral genomes from these samples found that their genomes were similar to each other, but quite different from the genomes of Heartland virus samples found in other states. “These results suggest that the virus may be evolving very rapidly in different geographic locations, or that it may be circulating primarily in isolated areas and not dispersing quickly between those areas,” Vazquez-Prokopec said in the statement.
Although human cases are rare, the researchers noted that infections with Heartland virus may be underdiagnosed. Tests are rarely ordered for it, and the cases that have been detected tended to be severe and were in people with underlying medical conditions.
“We assume that there’s a large number of people that might be getting exposed and aren’t having symptoms that are so serious,” Vazquez-Prokopec told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The researchers plan to expand their work by testing for the virus in ticks across the state and looking for factors that increase the chances of Heartland virus occurring in an area.
“We want to start filling in the huge gaps in knowledge of the transmission cycle for Heartland virus,” Vazquez-Prokopec said in the statement. “We need to better understand the key actors that transmit the virus and any environmental factors that may help it to persist within different habitats.”
Originally published on Live Science.
Heartland Virus Detected in Georgia’s Ticks
Certain ticks in Georgia are carrying an emerging virus that can make people sick, new research shows. The study found traces of the Heartland virus, one of the most recently discovered tickborne germs in the U.S., in the state’s lone star tick populations. The virus found in these ticks appears to be genetically distinct from samples collected elsewhere in the country, suggesting that it’s been present in Georgia for some time now.
The Heartland virus, also called Heartland bandavirus, was first discovered in 2009 by doctors in Missouri. By 2013, it was confirmed that lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) can carry and transmit the virus to humans. Its symptoms include fever, headaches, muscle pain, and a large loss of platelets, a blood component crucial to forming clots that prevent bleeding.
Cases of Heartland have been rarely documented since 2009. As of January 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 50 cases have been reported across 11 states in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast. Identified victims have been routinely hospitalized, and some have died, though these cases tended to involve people already in poorer health. Heartland isn’t easily identified, though, and it’s usually diagnosed after excluding other illnesses with similar symptoms, including other tickborne diseases. So it’s suspected that more cases have occurred than have been officially documented.
Heartland has been spotted in Georgia, where lone star ticks are abundant and are the most common source of human tick bites. So far, though, evidence of infection in Georgia had been only found in white tailed deer, a common tick host, and in a single human death. This new research, published in Emerging Infectious Disease, appears to be the first to confirm that the virus is actively circulating among lone star ticks in the state.
The researchers, hailing from Emory University and the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, collected nearly 10,000 juvenile and adult ticks between 2018 and 2019 and pooled their DNA to look for traces of the virus. They were able to identify and isolate three distinct samples of the virus, collected from both juvenile and adult ticks at different times and locations. Overall, they estimated that Heartland could be found in about one out of every 2,000 ticks.
The infection rate found in these ticks is relatively low, compared to studies of lone star ticks elsewhere. But the samples of the virus collected by the team all looked genetically similar to one another and not so much to samples collected in other regions. That indicates that it’s made a comfortable home for itself in Georgia, since it’s had enough time to evolve in unique ways from other populations of the virus. Even if the virus is only found in a small number of ticks, the sheer amount of exposure that residents have to them during the busy season (April to May) is likely still enough that a transmission risk exists in the state, according to senior study author Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an ecologist specializing in vector borne illness at Emory University.
“This study confirms the presence of the virus in Georgia and, more importantly, that it is being transmitted by the most abundant tick species that bites humans in the state,” Vazquez-Prokopec told Gizmodo in an email.
Very little is understood about Heartland virus, the authors note, including its life cycle and how common it is in humans. This lack of knowledge is all the more perilous since tickborne illness in general is on the rise (in no small part due to climate change). Another potential problem has come with the arrival and rapid spread of the invasive tick species Haemaphysalis longicornis, or the Asian longhorned tick.
These ticks, in their native home of Asia, are known to carry a virus related to Heartland that can cause a serious, sometimes fatal condition called severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome. If these new bad ticks can also carry and spread Heartland, the researchers warn, that could “lead to major changes” in its transmission potential in areas where both species overlap. After having first been spotted stateside in New Jersey in 2017, Asian longhorned ticks have been detected all along the Eastern U.S., including Georgia in 2021.
The researchers plan to keep studying Heartland in lone star ticks, and they’re now gearing up to keep track of the Asian longhorned tick as well. They also hope their research reminds people that ticks and the diseases they carry are a serious public health threat.
“We want to make the public aware of the importance of protecting themselves against tick bites, particularly the lone star tick, given that there is an additional risk of infection with this novel virus,” Vazquez-Prokopec said. “If going out, use repellent, and check after each hike for the presence of ticks in your body and the body of your dog.”
Poland’s Heartland Would Rather Keep E.U. Money Than Break With Bloc
KOBYLIN-BORZYMY, Poland — The twin steeples of Saint Stanislaus, a hulking, red-brick Catholic church, are visible for miles across the corn fields and cow pastures of this conservative area of eastern Poland, a bastion of support for the country’s nationalist governing party.
That party is “conservative and Catholic, and people here are very attached to national traditions and the church,” said Dariusz Sikorski, the elected chief of a county that gave more than 90 percent of its vote to the party’s victorious candidate in a presidential election last year.
They are also deeply attached, however, to cash from the European Union. Taxpayers in the 27-nation bloc provided nearly $150 million to build a nearby highway and millions more to help pay for a children’s playground, water pumping stations, a sewage system, clean-energy projects and improvements to the local school.
With Poland now locked in a tumultuous struggle with Europe over the rule of law that has raised the possibility, albeit very small, of the country being forced to leave the bloc, the government in Warsaw is wrestling with tension between nationalist instincts suffused with religious faith and the reality of economic and political self-interest.
How that tension resolves itself will decide the outcome of the European Union’s biggest crisis since Britain voted to leave the bloc in a 2016 referendum.
Relations with Brussels, the seat of the bloc’s executive, have become so frayed that the ruling Law and Justice party and its supporters in Warsaw have tossed ever more incendiary verbal bombs, threatening to “set fire to Europe” and reviling the European Union as a bullying “colonial” force. The Polish prime minister has even talked of a ‘third world war.”
But places like Kobylin-Borzymy seem in no mood for a fight to the death. Poland has received more than $225 billion from the European Union since it joined in 2004. It is slated to get nearly that much again in grants and loans during the current budget ending in 2027, plus another $47 billion as part of Europe’s Covid recovery program.
As for claims by hard-line nationalists in Warsaw that the European Union is an “occupier” akin to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, “nobody really believes that,” said Mr. Sikorski, who presides over a local council whose 15 elected members all support Law and Justice.
Many farmers in the area, the backbone of the local economy and a deep well of votes for Law and Justice, would have trouble staying afloat without subsidies from Brussels, he said. “Almost everyone here benefits from the E.U.,” he said. Leaving it, he added, “is not a realistic option.”
But such a departure, a version of Britain’s Brexit known as Polexit, has suddenly become a possibility after Poland’s constitutional tribunal ruled this month that the country’s national laws were superior to European law. Senior officials in Brussels and European politicians have denounced the ruling as an intolerable threat to the foundations of the union that cannot stand if Poland wants to stay a member.
Europe’s clash with the biggest of eight formerly Communist nations that joined the bloc in 2004 has been building for years over media freedom, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, coal mining and other issues. But the crisis threatened to boil over this month with the court ruling.
“You are sleepwalking toward an exit from the European Union,” a German member of the European Parliament told the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, during a heated debate on Poland last week at a session of the legislature in Strasbourg, France. The E.U., the German liberal, Moritz Körner, said, “is not a kind of self-service store. If you do not want to observe European law, you cannot remain a member.”
The ruling party’s loyal supporters in Kobylin-Borzymy mostly dismiss talk of Poland leaving the E.U. as an idle threat cooked up by foreign and Polish liberals, a view promoted enthusiastically over the past week by state television.
At least they hope it is.
Leszek Mezynski, a retired dairy farmer and deputy head of the regional council, said the conservative district wanted to keep out migrants and liberal ideas like gay marriage to avoid “civilizational suicide.” But it is more concerned, he said, about losing the economic benefits that flow from European farm subsidies, funding for new roads and other large dollops of cash.
Polexit “is not something anyone out here really wants,” Mr. Mezynski said.
Until Britain voted to leave in a 2016 referendum, however, Brexit was not something many Britons seemed to want either, or expected to happen.
Unlike Britain, where hostility to the European Union featured as a powerful force in domestic politics long before the 2016 vote, Poland has never had a significant lobby pushing for it to withdraw. In contrast to Britain before its departure, Poland gets far more money out of the bloc’s pot than it puts in.
A 2004 Polish referendum on joining the union passed with 77 percent of the vote and support for staying in it has since risen to nearly 90 percent, according to opinion polls.
Warnings that Poland is jeopardizing its membership have left the ruling party vulnerable to accusations by the opposition leader, Donald Tusk, that the government, for all its patriotic bluster, has effectively aligned itself with Moscow by undermining European unity. That is a potent charge in a country with an abiding fear of Russia.
Last week, Mr. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and, until 2019, president of the European Council in Brussels, drew tens of thousands of people chanting “we are staying” to a noisy pro-Europe protest in central Warsaw. At a separate rally in the northern city of Gdansk, the former Solidarity trade union leader Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading opposition to Poland’s Communist regime in the 1980s, denounced the government for putting Poland’s membership in the bloc at risk.
Polish cities, however, have long opposed Law and Justice. Far more worrying to the ruling party is the unease felt in its rural base.
The entrance hall to the primary school in Kobylin-Borzymy, named after a 16th-century Polish Jesuit priest celebrated for his patriotism, is adorned with crucifixes and a tribute to the Polish-born Pope John Paul II. The school, too, has been helped by money from Brussels, which provided aid for new insulation and a preschool.
Despite declarations by Prime Minister Morawiecki that Poland is a “proud country” that will never submit to E.U. financial pressure, such pressure has sometimes worked, even in the party’s heartland.
Scores of Polish towns dominated by Law and Justice caused outrage across Europe in 2019 by declaring themselves “L.G.B.T.-free” zones. But one by one, threatened with cuts in European funding, some have since quietly retreated.
And Mr. Morawiecki, shortly after vowing last week to never surrender in a defiant speech to the European Parliament, opened a clear path to a partial surrender. He told legislators that his government would scrap a disciplinary chamber for judges that Europe’s top court and its most senior officials see as compromising the independence of the Polish judiciary. They have repeatedly demanded that Poland dismantle it, and reverse other changes to the judicial system introduced by the ruling party.
Ultimate decision-making power in Warsaw, however, rests not with the prime minister, but with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 72, the ruling party’s deeply conservative and unpredictable leader.
Mr. Kaczynski, a fervent Catholic and lifelong bachelor, is reviled by liberals as a reactionary oddball. But he has an uncanny political sense that has made him Poland’s dominant figure, though it is now being tested by Warsaw’s clash with Brussels.
He has to worry about alienating voters who depend on European money as elections scheduled for 2023 approach. At the same time, he is struggling to hold together a fragile coalition government that depends on a far-right faction led by Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, the architect of changes to the judiciary now at the heart of the rift with Europe.
In an interview last week with a conservative weekly magazine, Sieci, Mr. Kaczynski dismissed the possibility of “Polexit” as “complete nonsense” invented by his opponents. But he also made clear that he does not want an early election, something that will be hard to avoid unless he appeases Mr. Ziobro and fellow Euroskeptics.
While there is no sign yet of any mass defection by his supporters, some voters are having second thoughts.
Piotr Perkowski, a 43-year-old farmer who gets European subsidies and used to vote for Law and Justice, said, “I definitely won’t vote for them now.” The government took money from the European Union to build a new water-pumping system, he said, but did not connect his house to it, leaving his family without running water. Law and Justice, he said, “made too many promises it did not keep.”
But Law and Justice, aided by state television, has convinced many people in Kobylin-Borzymy that the opposition, not the government, is to blame for stirring doubts about Poland’s membership in the bloc by airing the country’s domestic quarrels in front of foreigners.
“People should settle their disputes at home and not shout so their neighbors can hear,” said Kazimierz Kloskowski, whose family farm produces corn and wheat. All the same, as a recipient of cash subsidies from Europe, he’s not entirely convinced that escalating tension with Brussels is a good idea.
“There is no other option for us except Europe,” he said. “The only alternative to Brussels is Moscow. And we already know what this is like.”
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw, and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels.
2,000-year-old ‘Freedom to Zion’ coins found in biblical heartland
Two coins dating back some 2,000 years were found in the Binyamin region of the West Bank during an archaeological survey conducted by Bar-Ilan University, the university and the Binyamin Regional Council announced Tuesday.
The coins date back to the period of the Jewish revolts against the Romans.
The 2,000-year-old coins that date back to the period of the Jewish revolts against the Romans, July 13, 2021. (Credit: TAL ROGOVSKY)
The area is located in the northern part of the Judean Desert.
“We conducted the survey about a year ago with a group of my students,” said Dr. Dvir Raviv from Bar-Ilan, who led the initiative. “We had heard about antiquities looters active in the area, and especially in a cave near Wadi Rashash. I visited the cave and I saw pottery sherds and potential for interesting findings.”
An archaeological survey does not involve extensive excavations but rather having researchers sample what is on the surface of an area or just very limited digging.
The Bar-Ilan survey was not limited to the cave, but also extended to the surrounding area.
One coin was discovered near Wadi Rashash, and another in a location known as Hirbet J’bait.
The artifact found in Hirbet J’bait was minted around 67 CE. It features a vine leaf and the Hebrew inscription Herut Zion (Freedom for Zion) on one side, and a goblet and the inscription “Year Two” on the other. Just three years later, in 70 CE, the Romans would destroy the Temple in Jerusalem. Several other remains from that period, including a ritual bath, have been uncovered in the area.
The second coin dates back to the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt some 70 years later. It bears a palm branch surrounded by a wreath and the inscription LeHerut Yerushalayim (Freedom to Jerusalem) on one side and a musical instrument and the name “Shimon” on the other – the first name of the rebellion’s leader Bar Kochba.
The revolt – also known as the Third Jewish Revolt – broke out over the religious restrictions imposed by the Romans, as well as their decision to build a Roman city over the ruins of Jewish Jerusalem, including a pagan sanctuary where the Temple had stood.
At the time, coins were considered an important expression of sovereignty, as Donald T. Ariel, head of the Coin Department at the Israel Antiquities Authority told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview. “Minting coins meant to be free.”
SEVERAL HUNDRED Bar Kochba coins have been found in excavations around the Land of Israel – mostly in the area that was known as Judea back then – where the insurgents managed to score some important victories over the Romans and establish a brief, independent entity.
Some were discovered in the caves in several areas in the Judean desert.
However, the finding in Wadi Rashash marks the first time that such an artifact has been uncovered in this specific location.
Back then, the area constituted the 11th district of the province of Judea. Its capital city was Aqrabat; a modern Arab village with the same name still stands on the same spot.
“The coin from Wadi Rashash indicates the presence of a Jewish population in the area until the end of the Bar Kochba revolt, in contrast to what was previously believed by researchers: that the Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem were all destroyed during the Great Revolt and the area not resettled afterward,” Raviv said.
“This coin is in fact the first proof that the Akrabat region, the northernmost of the Judean districts during the Roman period, was controlled by Bar Kochba’s administration,” he noted.
The closest finding of Bar Kochba coins had occurred at an American-led excavation in the 1960s in a cave some six kilometers from Wadi Rashash.
Besides the coins, archaeologists have uncovered pottery sherds and other elements suggesting the continuity of the Jewish settlement at the time.
The caves in Wadi Rashash were much smaller than the ones in other areas of the Judean Desert, where Jewish refugees were known to have hidden.
“However, based on the amount of pottery, we can assume that dozens of people found shelter there,” Raviv said.
The caves had the advantage of being very close to the spring and also to an ancient settlement that existed where the Arab village of Duma stands today.
“Therefore we can assume that these refugees found shelter very close to their houses,” Raviv said.
During the survey, the archaeologists found signs of looting, he said, which is common in the area.
In the future, Raviv hopes to be able to conduct a full excavation at the site.