New publications
In America, ticks are carrying a virus that is deadly to humans
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Doctors in the United States of America are alarmed by the spread of a new deadly virus unknown to the scientific community. Specialists have already encountered the first fatal case from an unknown disease carried by a tick.
For six months, epidemiologists and specialists from the US public research university in Kansas established the causes of death of a fifty-year-old resident of Kansas, from Bourbon County.
As the research group managed to establish, the man's death was caused by a disease caused by a virus unknown to science. As experts noted, the virus genome resembles those identified in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, but Western European countries have never encountered viruses from this group before. Despite the fact that death from the new virus has been recorded only in a single case, experts are concerned, since a vaccine has not yet been developed and this could lead to an epidemic.
Scientists have named the new virus Bourbon, after the place where it was first discovered. Experts have also found similarities between the Bourbon virus and the Heartland virus discovered in 2009.
Several years ago, specialists at the Heartland Regional Medical Center described a previously unknown virus that was transmitted by ticks and caused fatigue, fever, diarrhea, and elevated platelet counts in the blood. The Bourbon virus has similar symptoms to Heartland, but also causes severe exhaustion.
Both viruses are transmitted to humans by ticks. As is known, ticks can transmit both bacterial and viral diseases. The most common disease transmitted by ticks in our latitudes is the tick-borne encephalitis virus. Infectious disease specialists from all countries agree that encephalitis is easier to prevent with special protective equipment (clothing, sprays, etc.) than to cure.
The scientific community is also concerned about the constant mutation of the Ebola virus, which has claimed many lives in West Africa and continues to spread among the population. Experts have expressed concern that the mutated virus will begin to spread around the planet by airborne droplets. According to microbiologists, the virus that causes the deadly fever has almost reached the stage at which it will begin to be transmitted from person to person by respiratory tract, like the flu, but the consequences of such an epidemic will become a real global catastrophe.
Some researchers believe that microscopic particles of the deadly Ebola fever are already capable of becoming airborne and causing illness in those around them. Such particles originate in the human gastrointestinal tract and enter the air through the lungs.
However, virologists believe that the deadly fever will continue to be transmitted exclusively through direct contact with the patient's biological fluids (blood, saliva, and other secretions). At the same time, virus specialists are confident that in order for the virus to be in the active phase of its life, it must be in the blood.
[