Hailey Wilmer/Colorado Daily

All standing water, including the wetlands near the East Campus Research Park are ideal breeding ground for the Culex mosquito, which is known to transmit the West Nile Virus to humans.

It might sound a lot like high school’s sex education – but, like pregnancy, the best way to treat the rising rate of Colorado’s West Nile virus is to focus on prevention methods.

Symptoms of the West Nile virus can encompass mundane ailments but has the potential to develop into severe neurological diseases, especially in patients over 50.

The virus is considered “a debilitating illness,” said Heath Harmon, the communicable disease division manager at Boulder Community Public Health. Harmon stated that symptoms can take hold anywhere from three to 14 days after infection sets in.

States reporting the highest number of West Nile cases are characteristically the High Plains states such as the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado — the latter earning fourth place in the nation for most human deaths from the virus to date.

According to Colorado surveillance numbers, the total number of Culex mosquitoes (carriers of the virus) trapped have etymologists hoping 2008 will shape up to be a normal year, Harmon said.

The greater the moisture, the greater the problem and that is exactly what happened in 2007, with 576 reported cases in Colorado and seven total deaths.

The Center for Disease and Prevention has determined female Culex mosquitoes to be most active between dusk and dawn, and most aggressive between 7 p.m. and midnight.

“Going to different summer festivals, fairs or to watch fireworks are the times most likely to transmit West Nile Virus,” Harmon said. “The past five years worth of data in Colorado say 80 percent of infections happen from the first week of June to the last week of August.”

State health officials have confirmed the first two human cases of West Nile virus in the past week from Boulder and Logan counties.

The Boulder patient is recovering from a combination of meningitis and insufflates, meaning the person had both forms of the illness, Harmon said.

“Wearing repellent and long sleeves when active can help,” Harmon said, “but there is no treatment, realistically, there is only prevention.”

BCPH issued the “Four D’s” to help residents defend themselves against West Nile.

* DEET, enhanced insect repellant or alternative

* * DRESS in long sleeves and pants

* * DUSK to dawn avoid the outdoors

* * DRAIN standing water outside the home

* The CDC recommends products DEET, Picaridin and Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus as they have the necessary active ingredient to help defend against West Nile carriers, proven by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Harmon advises people to drain small kiddie pools, flower pots, rain barrels, and bird baths every few days to decrease the chances of accidentally providing a West Nile breeding ground.

“Culex larvae can mature to adulthood in as little as five days,” Harmon said. “Cleaning out clogged gutters, especially at this point in the season, would be smart.”

Of the 2,947 Coloradans who contracted the Virus during the state’s highest numbers in 2003, 63 died. Of those who displayed the “fever form of the illness had symptoms for 30 days or longer,” Harmon said.

The West Nile virus was first identified as early as the 1950s in Egypt in the West Nile district of the state — hence its name. The virus arrived in New York City for the first time in 1999 and since it has spread throughout the continental U.S., including parts of Canada and Mexico.

“Patients that were infected from previous seasons sometimes talk about a reoccurrence of symptoms, but when those individuals are retested, all we find are the antibodies the body created to fight the original infection . . . it’s still a new virus, we don’t have solid long-term data, though insufflates patients might never fully recover,” Harmon said.

Lyle Petersen, director of the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases at the CDC and one of the foremost experts in the world on West Nile states in a CNN article issued last week, “from my own experience, I can tell you it’s not a very mild illness.”

According to the article written by CNN Medical Correspondent Judy Fortin, Petersen walked down his driveway in Fort Collins, chatted briefly with a neighbor and within hours of being bitten he began to feel the symptoms that were all too familiar.

A self-issued blood test confirmed his suspicion, and coping with extreme fatigue has been his most recent plight.

In more serious cases, the Petersen and the CDC recommend that patients be hospitalized to receive supportive care to treat current symptoms with intravenous fluids.

As Harmon and other state health officials have noted in press release statements, West Nile virus symptoms have been surveyed to last 90 days or longer.

On the other side of the spectrum, the CDC reports that even in areas where the virus is circulating, very few mosquitoes are actually infected and in conjunction, less than one percent of people who get bitten and become infected will get severely ill.

Almost 80 percent of people infected with West Nile will not show any symptoms, and pets to their credit have even better statistics of becoming infected.

Serious symptoms can include: high fever, headache, disorientation, tremors, convulsions, weakness, vision loss and paralysis and may last several weeks and neurological effects may be permanent.

Milder symptoms can include: fever, body ache, nausea, vomiting, and a skin rash on the chest, stomach and back and can last between a few days and several weeks, according to the CDC.

Mosquito surveillance traps, several planted around the CU campus by Integrated Pest Management, attempt to bait female Culex mosquitoes to visit the trap using carbon dioxide so their prevalence can be recorded.

“Mammals exhale carbon dioxide, so the female mosquitoes that are looking for a blood meal are attracted to the carbon dioxide and are lured into the traps . . . female mosquitoes bite humans to get a blood meal right before they lay eggs,” Harmon said.

Males in actuality are nectar feeding and typically do not bite humans. Mosquitoes on the whole are not helped or harmed by the virus.

“The best way to kill a mosquito is when it’s still in its larval stage,” Harmon said. “Either way, I’d use a flyswatter.”

Contact Victoria Barbatelli about this story at editor@coloradodaily.com, or at (303) 443-6272, ext. 113.