Researchers have identified the cause of a Kansas farmer’s mysterious death this summer as Bourbon virus.
Thought to be transmitted by ticks, the virus “was fast-moving and severe, causing lung and kidney failure, and shock,” The New York Times reported, killing the previously healthy man after only 10 days in the hospital.
Together, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and University of Kansas Hospital researchers identified the virus as a thogotovirus, part of a larger type of viruses called orthomyxoviruses, Dana Hawkinson, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at The University of Kansas Hospital said in the video statement above.
Bourbon virus, named after Bourbon County, Kansas, where the only known patient lived, is similar to viruses seen previously in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, said Hawkinson, but nothing like it had ever been identified in the Western Hemisphere before.
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