Kansas Doctors Discover New Tick Borne Illness, Dubbed, 'Bourbon Virus'

DiamondSmiles · #1 ● 12-23-2014, 07:51 PM

By Meredith Engel
New York Daily News

December 23, 2014

A new tick-borne virus is responsible for killing a Kansas man this summer, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said.

John Seested, 68, of Fort Scott, died from organ failure after he was bitten by a tick. Standard tick-borne illness tests at the University of Kansas Hospital came back negative, and Seested did not respond to traditional therapies.

"It was very frustrating. That's one of the biggest problems with my job, which I love: when we can't answer those questions, when we can't help the patients or their families," Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease physician at the university hospital, told KSHB.com.

But researchers at the hospital and the CDC have now determined a tick-borne illness did kill Seested — just a previously unknown one. They dubbed it the, "Bourbon Virus," after the county in which the patient lived.

"We continued to push and have concerns as to why this happened," Hawkinson said. "The CDC was on board with us and was able to help us with that and we've now identified this new virus."

A new tick-borne illness has been discovered in Kansas, named the ‘Bourbon virus’ after the place a victim had lived.

The CDC is now investigating other deaths to see if they could have been a result of the Bourbon Virus.

Symptoms of tick-borne illness include a high fever, strong headache, muscle aches and nausea.