If you have severe West Nile, you may need to stay in a hospital so you can get treatment to help your body fight the illness. Ask your doctor if you need to stay home. You may feel well enough to keep doing your normal activities. You may also want to take medicine to reduce pain or fever. Be sure to drink enough fluids and get lots of rest. If you have a mild case, you can recover at home. Your body just has to fight the infection on its own. This scan is done to find out if you have encephalitis. An MRI scan, which makes pictures of your brain.A spinal tap ( lumbar puncture) to look for antibodies or other signs of the virus in the fluid that surrounds your brain and spinal cord.The antibodies don't always appear right away, so your doctor may test your blood again in a couple of weeks. The antibodies can show if you have had a recent West Nile infection. The doctor may also test your blood for antibodies to the virus. If your doctor thinks that you may have West Nile, they will ask questions to find out when you were bitten by a mosquito and what symptoms you have. If you have a severe case of West Nile, symptoms can last for weeks or months, especially if the infection has spread to your brain. Confusion or reduced attention to surroundings.Ĭall your doctor right away if you or someone you know has symptoms like these.It can lead to swelling of the brain ( encephalitis), the spinal cord (myelitis), or the tissues around the brain and spinal cord ( meningitis). West Nile causes serious illness in some people who get infected. Most people who have the mild form of West Nile have a fever for 5 days, have a headache for 10 days, and feel tired for more than a month. A rash, usually on the chest, and swollen glands ( lymph nodes).Feeling very tired and less hungry than usual.When symptoms do appear, they start 2 to 14 days after the mosquito bite. Most people who have West Nile have no symptoms. That rarely happens in the United States, though, because all donated blood and organs for transplant are screened to see if the virus is present. West Nile can spread through an organ transplant or a blood transfusion. But you can't get West Nile from these animals or from touching or kissing an infected person. Mosquitoes can also spread the virus to other animals, such as horses. Most often, mosquitoes spread the virus by biting birds infected with the virus and then biting people. But some people who get a severe infection have permanent problems such as seizures, memory loss, and brain damage. Most people fully recover from West Nile. People older than 50 are at the highest risk for serious problems from West Nile. But in rare cases, West Nile leads to severe illness that affects the brain or spinal cord. The infection it causes may be so mild that people don't even know they have it. West Nile virus is a type of virus that is spread by mosquitoes. Sharifi Z, Shooshtari MM, Talebian A (2010) A study of West Nile virus infection in Iranian blood donors.Conditions Basics What is West Nile virus? Kalaycioglu H, Korukluoglu G, Ozkul A et al (2012) Emergence of West Nile virus infections in humans in Turkey, 2010 to 2011. Ozkuli A, Yildirm Y, Pinar D et al (2006) Serological evidence of West Nile Virus (WNV) in mammalian species in Turkey. Mil Med 161(3):149–153īatieha A, Saliba EK, Graham R et al (2000) Seroprevalence of West Nile, Rift Valley, and sandfly arboviruses in Hashimiah, Jordan. Clin Infect Dis 34(Suppl 5):S171–S207īryan JP, Igbal M, Ksiazek TG et al (1996) Prevalence of sand fly fever, West Nile, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and leptospirosis antibodies in Pakistani military personnel. Wallace MR, Hale BR, Utz GC et al (2002) Endemic infectious diseases of Afghanistan. N Engl J Med 349(13):1236–1245įereidouni SR, Ziegler U, Linker S et al (2011) West Nile virus monitoring in migrating and resident water birds in Iran: are common coots main reservoirs of the virus in wetlands? Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis 11(10):1377–1381 Pealer LN, Marfin AA, Petersen LR et al (2003) Transmission of West Nile virus through blood transfusion in the United States in 2002. Sotelo E, Gutierrez-Guzmán AV, Amo Jd et al (2011) Pathogenicity of two recent Western Mediterranean West Nile virus isolates in a wild bird species indigenous to Southern Europe: the red-legged partridge. Kakaiya R (2006) Transfusion transmitted West Nile virus infection update. The Center for Food Security and Public Health (CFSPH) (2009) West Nile virus infection. Smithburn KC, Hughes TP, Burke AW, Paul JH (1940) A neurotropic virus isolated from the blood of a native of Uganda. Lim SM, Koraka P, Osterhaus AD, Martina BE (2011) West Nile virus: immunity and pathogenesis.

Donate blood west nile virus