An expert on mosquito-borne diseases from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be collaborating with HSPH scientists on West Nile encephalitis research for the next year, further solidifying the school’s status as a leading academic research facility for West Nile encephalitis.

Paul Reiter is chief of the Entomology Section of the Dengue Branch of the CDC. He has spent the last 15 years studying dengue fever, an illness caused by any one of four related viruses carried by mosquitoes. The dengue viruses cause fever, severe headaches, and flu-like symptoms. Sometimes, victims go into shock and hemorrhage to death.

Dengue first appeared in 1779-80 in Asia, Africa, and North America. Programs to eradicate the mosquitoes that carry dengue viruses helped curtail the illness in some parts of the world, but dengue fever has resurged in many of those areas and is now pandemic in parts of Asia, South America, and Africa. According to the CDC, an estimated 2.5 billion people live in areas at risk for an epidemic transmission of dengue fever.

Reiter has also studied malaria, river blindness (which results from flies depositing worm larvae into humans and can cause blindness if the worms migrate to the eyes), and ebola.

At HSPH, Reiter will study the transmission of the virus that causes West Nile encephalitis and evaluate programs to control spread of the disease. He will work with Andrew Spielman, professor of tropical public health, other researchers in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and officials from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

"We’ve learned through hard experience that controlling complicated diseases such as mosquito-borne diseases is not just a matter of killing mosquitoes," said Reiter. "In many cases, we have very little idea of how effective control methods are in preventing disease transmission."

Reiter plans to use evaluation methods he developed in his study of dengue fever and St. Louis encephalitis, another mosquito-borne illness transmitted by the same species of mosquito that carries the virus that causes West Nile encephalitis.

He said he came to HSPH in part to work with Spielman, whom he has known for more than a decade.

"Andy is a giant in the field," said Reiter. "It is a great privilege to collaborate with him."

Reiter also thinks the existing collaboration between HSPH and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health will prove fruitful.

Having arrived two weeks ago, Reiter said, "I am already finding it stimulating to be here."