A 55-year old man in a coma is admitted into the hospital in Kentucky in June. H

Question

A 55-year old man in a coma is admitted into the hospital in Kentucky in June. His wife tells the doctors that he was complaining about severe headaches and backaches earlier in the week, but they had both believed he just had the flu. When asked, she tells the doctor that she can’t remember her husband being bitten by a mosquito, but she is sure that he might have been while he was out tending the horses on their farm. The doctor takes a blood sample for serology and then orders an MRI. When the results come back, he finds that the man has a high titer of virus in his blood and the MRI shows a lot of tissue death in the man’s brain. What does the man have? What type of virus causes this disease?

Explanation / Answer

The old man might have viral encephalitis, which occurs mainly due to Herpes viruses and Arboviruses. The West Nile viruses are transmitted by mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects. Examples include West Nile encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, and Eastern equine encephalitis. Herpes simplex is another virus that can cause degradation of the nervous tissue.

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