Infection by Insect

Most people associate viral hepatitis, a debilitating and potentially fatal liver disease, with polluted water, contaminated shellfish or unsterilized hypodermic needles. But there is another way that the water-borne hepatitis viruses can find their way into humans: by mosquito. Researchers from the New Jersey Medical School and the Veterans Administration Hospital in East Orange, N.J., report in the A.M.A. Journal that they became suspicious after studying an epidemic of hepatitis that hit New Jersey in 1955. None of the victims was a drug addict, and none had eaten shellfish or come into contact with known hepatitis carriers. But all had been victims of multiple mosquito bites in the three months preceding their infection. The insects might well have given them the disease. When the researchers, using newly developed techniques, examined 251 batches of mosquitoes from 15 sites in the state last summer, they found that ten of the groups carried hepatitis antigen--convincing evidence that the insects had also harbored the virus.

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