WHEAT RIDGE, Colo.—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the country’s first case of Marburg fever, a disease caused by a virus indigenous to Africa that is spread through contact with infected animals or the bodily fluids of infected humans.
The 2008 case in a patient in Wheat Ridge was the first ever reported in the United States, CDC spokesman Dave Daigle said Saturday.
The patient, whose name wasn’t released, has recovered.
The Rocky Mountain News, which first reported the case, said the patient was a man. Health officials would not confirm the patient’s gender.
The CDC announced Friday the infected patient was treated for Marburg hemorrhagic fever at Lutheran Medical Center in January 2008. The patient had traveled to Uganda, visited a python cave in Maramagambo Forest in Queen Elizabeth Park, and encountered fruit bats, which can carry the Marburg virus.
The Ugandan government closed the cave in August after another tourist from the Netherlands died from the disease in July.
The patient in Wheat Ridge sought follow up care at the hospital in July and had more tests done after finding out about the tourist’s death, Daigle said.
Pierre Rollin, acting chief of the Special Pathogens Branch of the CDC, said officials there did more specialized tests of the initial sample taken in January and discovered in December that the patient had contracted the Marburg fever.
CDC officials said identifying the virus and how a patient contracted it can be difficult. Rollin said positive identification often depends on the quality of the sample being tested and when it was collected. Samples taken early in the patient’s illness makes identification easier, Rollin said.
He said that given the lapse of time, there’s no danger that the patient spread the virus to anyone else. Still, he said CDC officials are testing hospital staff to see whether anyone else became sick a year ago and make sure the virus didn’t go undetected.
A Lutheran hospital official said no staff member has tested positive for the disease.
“Our investigation so far has concluded that none of the staff and physicians who cared for the patient has developed the symptoms consistent with this illness,” said hospital spokeswoman Kim Kobel.
Lutheran hospital officials said when the patient arrived, they “followed the protocols for dealing with an unknown infection.” That included contact isolation (gown and glove) and tests for infectious diseases.
Hospital officials said any staff member still concerned about exposure can have additional blood tests done at Lutheran Medical Center.
According to the CDC Web site, recorded cases of the disease are rare. The virus was first recognized in 1967 after outbreaks in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and in Serbia, the Web site said. The virus is animal-borne, but it’s unknown how an animal transmits the disease to humans, according to CDC.
Rollin said cases of Marburg fever are mostly seen in Africa.
The virus has an incubation period of 5-10 days, and the first symptoms are fever, chills and headaches. Symptoms worsen after the fifth day, with vomiting, abdominal pain, jaundice, inflammation of the pancreas and severe weight loss. Symptoms also include shock, delirium and multi-organ dysfunction.
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Information from: Rocky Mountain News,
