Researchers warn of ‘fever from the forest’

Dengue virus circulating between monkeys and mosquitoes could emerge to cause human outbreaks. More than a thousand years ago, somewhere in Southeast Asia, a fateful meeting occurred between a mosquito-borne virus that infected mainly monkeys and a large, susceptible group of humans. The result: the world’s first outbreak of dengue fever. Today, dengue virus – which can produce high fever, excruciating joint pain and even death – has spread throughout tropical Asia, Africa and South America, and in 2008 it re-appeared in the US; and, could be even more widespread along the U.S. Gulf Coast but there is no surveillance in place to detect it. Annually dengue strikes about 100 million people and causes an estimated 50,000 deaths, thriving in the urban environments infested by Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species primarily responsible for human dengue transmission. Meanwhile, the virus’ forest-dwelling counterpart – known as “sylvatic dengue” – continues to flourish in Southeast...