West Nile Virus Research Paper

West Nile Virus
Jennie Youn
5/5/14
Preparatory Biology

There are hundreds of thousands of diseases in the world identified by scientists today. The disease focused on today is called the West Nile encephalitis. The West Nile encephalitis is an infection caused by the disease known as the West Nile virus. The West Nile virus is transmitted by birds to humans with the help of mosquitoes. There is no vaccine or specific treatment to prevent the virus. Some of the symptoms of a mild infection include fever, headache, and body aches. More severe infections include symptoms such as high fever, coma, tremors, paralysis, and rarely death (Medicine.net). So, this paper is going to focus mainly on the organism responsible for the
Well, when an infected mosquito feeds on an uninfected bird, the virus builds up on the bird. Then, another mosquito feeds on the infected bird, thus the mosquito becomes infected (Medicine.net). This cycle is repeated and at one point, the numbers of infected mosquitoes become great enough to transmit the West Nile virus to other animals such as horses or humans. So, humans get the West Nile virus from bites of a mosquito. The mosquito associated with the West Nile virus is primarily the Culex pipiens mosquito. This mosquito is in the Animalia kingdom. So, you can infer that this mosquito does not contain prokaryotes or protists. Also, you can infer that the mosquito is multicellular, a heterotroph, and lack a rigid cell wall. The Culex pipiens mosquito reproduces sexually, and it is diploid (“West Nile Virus: Overview and
Also, if a person in their 50s lives in Africa, he or she has the greatest chance of acquiring the West Nile virus because Africa is where the West Nile virus infection is the most common. The first case of this disease was found in Uganda of Africa in 1937. The West Nile virus have been found in continents such as Africa, Europe, west and Central Asia, Middle East, Romania, Czech Republic, Russia, and Israel. Also, the West Nile virus has been found in United States, Canada, and Mexico. The West Nile Virus is spread worldwide by infected migrating birds flying from areas with known virus activity. However, it is also possible that imported birds, mosquitoes, and other animals can introduce the infection into new areas. Climate and environmental change in a new area could have attracted the mosquitoes. The growth of the population which increased international travel could have been one of the factors to the spread of the West Nile virus. Also, the changing practices of agriculture and climate changes are one of the factors as well. Since 1999, over 30,000 people acquired the disease and over 1,200 died. This disease is not a major health concern in the United States of America mainly because 80 percent of the people who acquire this disease do not experience the symptoms of this disease. And, people who died from this disease is less