The first widespread outbreak of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Arizona underscores the need for increased physician awareness to fight this and other emerging infectious diseases.That’s the conclusion of Dr. J. Stephen Dumler, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who has published an article on the subject in the Aug. 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.Dumler said the Arizona outbreak of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever can be traced to infected ticks that were carried into the state by feral dogs.A study of this outbreak by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears in the same edition of the journal. The CDC study included 11 people confirmed to have the disease and five people considered probable cases. The researchers found fever-infected ticks in the patients’ homes and yards; all the patients also owned and had come into contact with dogs with infected ticks.Of the 16 patients, two were children who died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
