A 65-year-old man from Bernalillo County has been confirmed as contracting the second human case of plague in New Mexico this year, according to the state Department of Health, the Albuquerque Environmental Health Department, and the Bernalillo County Health Protection Section.
In addition, two women from Doña Ana County and a Valencia County man have been diagnosed with the West Nile virus. The Department of Health says all three are hospitalized with neuroinvasive disease, the more serious form of the illness.
Unlike the first case of plague, involving a 52-year-old Santa Fe County woman who died, the Bernalillo County man was treated in a local hospital and has since recovered and been released, said Paul Smith, manager for the Urban Biology Division of the city’s Environmental Health Department. The man, he said, lives in the East Mountains area.
“We are conducting an environmental assessment, taking samples and examining the area around his property for the presence of plague in rodents and fleas,” he said Thursday. “We don’t have the results back yet.”
Plague is endemic in New Mexico, where rats, mice, squirrels, prairie dogs and rabbits carry the disease, as well as the fleas that feed on them, and are the vector for spreading the disease. There are more cases in the summer, when there is more vegetation and food for the animals that carry the bacteria.
The Bernalillo County man had the bubonic version of plague in which the bacteria collect in lymph nodes, most often in the groin, arm and neck, causing swelling or “buboes,” hence the name “bubonic,” Smith said.
The Santa Fe County woman had the pneumonic version of plague. The bacteria is “exactly the same as in bubonic plague,” except it settles and reproduces in the lungs. This type of plague presents more of a public health hazard, he said, because when the infected person coughs or sneezes, the bacteria can be transmitted to others.
“Almost all cases of plague in New Mexico are flea-bite transmitted and are of the bubonic type,” Smith said.
Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian with the Department of Health, said that the three people who contracted West Nile virus all have meningitis and encephalitis, meaning the virus has gotten into the tissue around the brain and into the brain itself.
That brings to four the number of cases this year. In April, a 12-year-old girl from Valencia County was diagnosed with the severe neuroinvasive form of West Nile virus. She was hospitalized but has since recovered, Ettestad said.
While West Nile virus is most frequently found in livestock, last year the state recorded 24 cases of West Nile virus in humans, with one fatality. Most cases occur in August and September, and because of plentiful rainfall this year, there is more standing water and more mosquitoes, which spread the disease to people and animals.
Consequently, Ettestad said, “we could still see more (human) cases than we did last year until the first hard frost kills the mosquitoes.”