HELENA INDEPENDENT (Colorado) 18 July 03 Researchers study West Nile virus in alligators (Diedtra Henderson, The Denver Post)
Fort Collins, Colo.: In a high-tech, ultra-secure lab where Centers for Disease Control scientists wrangle with killer bugs, alligators grow. Fifty baby gators, to be precise, spend dimly lit days in temperature-controlled tanks.
CDC researchers are feeding them and keeping them hydrated in the midst of a hot, dry summer in Fort Collins. And, they're infecting the cold-blooded creatures with West Nile virus.
The gators are unpaid subjects in a cutting-edge experiment to learn whether they are disease incubators contributing to the spread of West Nile in swamps they normally call home. The project, which includes Colorado State University researchers, may also determine whether growing conditions at hot, steamy Southern farms that commercially raise gators renders them more vulnerable to the infectious disease.
The end of West Nile season spells relief for much of the mosquito-plagued nation. Down south, however, it has ushered in a wave of death at alligator farms. At a south Georgia farm with more than 10,000 animals, 250 gators perished in the winter of 2001. More than 1,000 died late last fall.
Some died from West Nile outright. The viral infection left others so weak that bacterial infections polished them off. In the vast majority of cases, the death toll was highest among the youngest gators.
A seven-member University of Georgia research team found that horsemeat fed to the alligators was laced with West Nile virus. Of mammals, horses are most susceptible to West Nile with at least 30 percent dying after infection.
‘‘Contaminated horsemeat is the presumed source of the outbreak,'' the researchers wrote in a recent article in ‘‘Emerging Infectious Diseases.''
Researchers study West Nile virus in alligators