Nearly 150 U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been diagnosed with a parasitic skin disease and hundreds more could unknowingly be infected, doctors reported Thursday.
Doctors fear that soldiers returning from the front may consult doctors in the United States who have never seen the disease. Complicating matters: The best drug used to treat it is not licensed in the United States.
Leishmaniasis, which soldiers have coined the "Baghdad Boil," is carried by biting sand flies and doesn't spread from person to person. It causes skin lesions that if untreated may take months, even years, to heal. The lesions can be disfiguring, doctors say.
So far, 148 soldiers have confirmed cases, but hundreds more are expected, says Army Lt. Col. Russell Coleman, an entomologist who spent 10 months in Iraq with the 520th Theater Army Medical Laboratory. He reported the outbreak Thursday to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, meeting in Philadelphia.
Sand flies are active during warm weather, and soon after U.S. troops arrived in Iraq in late March, "we started seeing soldiers basically eaten alive," Coleman says. "They'd get a hundred, in some cases 1,000 bites in a single night."
Insect repellants and bed nets are standard issue, Coleman says, but many units failed to pack them when they were deployed.
The sand flies have vanished with the cooler weather in Iraq, but because of a long incubation period, lesions may not appear for six months or longer after infection occurs. Coleman and Army Lt. Col. Peter Weina, a leishmaniasis expert still in Iraq, predicted in April that there would be 400 cases.
All affected soldiers are being sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to be treated with the drug Pentosam.
<http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1205iraq-boil05.html> *****
Juan Gonzalez, "Baghdad Boil Festers as New Enemy of G.I.s," November 25, 2003, <http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/140016p-124146c.html>
"Sand Flies Dangerous in Iraq": <http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=5358>
***** Military blood bank needs new donors By Fred Zimmerman, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Monday, November 17, 2003
CAMP LESTER, Okinawa - The instant disqualification of potential blood donors returning from Iraq is putting a strain on Okinawa's blood supply.
The Armed Services Blood Bank Center here is saying it's in "dire need" of new blood donors.
Any servicemember who steps foot inside Iraq will be disqualified from giving blood anywhere from one to three years, Becky Leavitt, a blood-donor recruiter, said Friday.
Depending on where servicemember spent time, they can be banned because of the possibility of exposure to leishmaniasis or malaria, she said. . . .
<http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=18048&archive=true> *****
***** Leishmaniasis
Leishmania parasites are named after W.B. Leishman, who developed one of the earliest stains of Leishmania in 1901. Widespread in 22 countries in the New World and in 66 nations in the Old World, leishmaniasis is not found in South-east Asia. Human infections are found in 16 countries in Europe, including France, Italy, Greece, Malta, Spain and Portugal. Occurring in several forms, the disease is generally recognized for its cutaneous form which causes non-fatal, disfiguring lesions, although epidemics of the potentially fatal visceral form cause thousands of deaths. . . .
<http://www.who.int/tdr/diseases/leish/default.htm> ***** -- Yoshie
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