TY - JOUR AU - Giladi, Michael AU - Metzkor-Cotter, Einat AU - Martin, Denise AU - Siegman-Igra, Yardena AU - Korczyn, Amos AU - Rosso, Raffaele AU - Berger, Stephen AU - Campbell, Grant AU - Lanciotti, Robert T1 - West Nile Encephalitis in Israel, 1999: The New York Connection T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2001 VL - 7 IS - 4 SP - 659 SN - 1080-6059 AB - We describe two cases of West Nile (WN) encephalitis in a married couple in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1999. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction performed on a brain specimen from the husband detected a WN viral strain nearly identical to avian strains recovered in Israel in 1998 (99.9% genomic sequence homology) and in New York in 1999 (99.8%). This result supports the hypothesis that the 1999 WN virus epidemic in the United States originated from the introduction of a strain that had been circulating in Israel. KW - West Nile virus KW - encephalitis KW - outbreak KW - United States DO - 10.3201/eid0704.017410 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/4/01-7410_article ER - End of Reference