PROF EARNS GRANT TO STUDY FLOOD MOSQUITOES

As a result of flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers this summer, a Southeast Missouri State University biology professor has been asked to survey mosquitoes gathered from around the state in an effort to determine if they are carrying the deadly encephalitis virus.

Christina Frazier is receiving more than $7,000 in federal flood relief funds through the Missouri Department of Health to conduct the research, in which she will probe up to 24,000 mosquitoes a week for at least eight weeks in the 3B Safety Lab in the Rhodes Hall of Science.

Frazier says she feels a "funny kind of excitement" about the project.

"You really want to find a virus," she said. "On the other hand, you really don't want to find the virus because you don't want an area to be affected by St. Louis Encephalitis."

The virus is so named because St. Louis was, in the early 1930s, the first city where the encephalitis virus was isolated and identified, Frazier said.

Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain, which can fatally affect the central nervous system. Symptoms of the virus, which often strikes more older than younger people, include headaches and fever, she said.

Frazier said she is the only researcher in Missouri testing for the virus and was asked to do so after an advanced disease prevention team from the U.S. Public Health Service suggested the need for such a study after a recent visit to St. Louis. Frazier has worked for more than five years with the St. Louis County Department of Health Vector Control Section on disease surveillance of mosquitoes.

She said she was selected to conduct the testing because Southeast is the only regional university in Missouri with a safety lab equipped for such work.

Until the first hard frost, U.S. Navy Disease Vector Ecology and Control Teams and other collection teams will gather mosquitoes from around Missouri and send them to Frazier to be analyzed, she said. One naval team will collect mosquitoes in the Cape Girardeau, Scott City, Sikeston, Perryville, and Ste. Genevieve areas and forward them frozen to Frazier. She will then grind them and perform tests on them to identify any presence of encephalitis.

Frazier says she expects to find mostly pest mosquitoes - those lacking the potential to carry disease. Vector mosquitoes are those that carry disease.

"My gut reaction is that we are not seeing an increase in mosquitoes that could carry the St. Louis Encephalitis virus at this point," she said.

Frazier will report her findings to the Missouri Department of Health. If Frazier finds a mosquito believed to be carrying the virus, she will forward it to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Fort Collins, Colo., which will perform an independent confirmation, she said.

If the CDC confirms the case, vector control agents and representatives from several government agencies will conduct "adult knockdown spraying and larvaciding" in the area in which the mosquito was collected, Frazier said.

Residents in the infected area also will be asked to increase their use of mosquito repellent.

"This project is a nice chance to get to practice my craft," Frazier said. "I consider this to be my way of helping with flood relief efforts. This also is kind of a neat project for Southeast."