“You don’t die from it, but you wish you could,” according to a sufferer from Dengue fever we quoted in 2002. Actually, he’s not quite right – about 22,000 people did die of it last year, although this is a small percentage of those who contract it. And now America is being told to brace itself for possible future outbreaks. According to an article published today in JAMA (extract, press release) the incurable and sometimes deadly disease could soon become a fixture in the continental United States

Dengue is one of the world’s “most aggressive re-emerging infections”, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and David Morens, his senior scientific advisor. After being absent for decades it is again striking US citizens, fuelled by an increase in air travel to infected regions and global warming increasing the range of the mosquitoes that carry it. It is already increasing in frequency along the Texas-Mexico border and “returning with unprecedented severity in US tropical territories and commonwealths such as Puerto Rico” the two doctors write.

“This is an important problem, and our options for control and prevention at the moment are not very good. It’s easy to forget when a disease has been away for a long period of time,” Morens told Bloomberg.

On a broader scale, it’s worth noting that dengue is already a serious problem in other countries (such as Singapore) and that there are 50 to 100 million annual cases worldwide, leading to 500,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths, mostly in children.

Other news coverage

Tropical dengue fever may threaten U.S.: report – Reuters

Incurable dengue disease could spread in US: researchers – AFP

See also Nature’s more recent special feature on dengue.

Image: Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries dengue / photo by James Gathany, via CDC