TY - JOUR AU - Coffey, Lark L. AU - Crawford, Cynda AU - Dee, James AU - Miller, Ryan AU - Freier, Jerome AU - Vasilakis, Nikos T1 - Serologic Evidence of Widespread Everglades Virus Activity in Dogs, Florida T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2006 VL - 12 IS - 12 SP - 1873 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Everglades virus (EVEV), an alphavirus in the Venezuelan equine encephalitis complex, circulates among rodents and vector mosquitoes in Florida and occasionally infects humans. It causes febrile disease, sometimes accompanied by neurologic manifestations. Although previous surveys showed high seroprevalence in humans, EVEV infections may be underdiagnosed because the disease is not severe enough to warrant a clinic visit or the undifferentiated presentations complicate diagnosis. Documented EVEV activity, as recent as 1993, was limited to south Florida. Using dogs as sentinels, a serosurvey was conducted to evaluate whether EVEV circulated recently in Florida and whether EVEV's spatial distribution parallels that of the mosquito vector, Culex cedecei. Four percent of dog sera contained neutralizing EVEV antibodies, and many seropositive animals lived farther north than both recorded EVEV activity and the principal vector. These results indicate that EVEV is widespread in Florida and may be an important, unrecognized cause of human illness. KW - Everglades virus KW - epidemiology KW - serosurvey KW - Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus KW - ecology KW - research KW - Florida KW - United States DO - 10.3201/eid1212.060446 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/12/06-0446_article ER - End of Reference