In The News: School of Public Health

Two cases of West Nile virus have been found in people, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. SNHD reported the first case of West Nile virus in mosquitoes just over a month ago. Today they announced two men have contracted the illness and are in recovery.

51ԹϺ professor and mosquito disease expert Louisa Messenger tells Joe Moeller why Southern Nevada has seen a "massive uptick" in our mosquito population in recent years.
If you are planning a trip to the ninth island in the coming months, make sure to wear insect repellent. Health officials warn of a record number of mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus around Las Vegas.
With summer outdoor activities in full swing, everyone’s looking for ways to keep mosquitoes, flies and other pests at bay — and Irish Spring soap is a perennial trending solution. In this YouTube video, the host places a bar on the porch, rubs it on doors and tables, puts grated flakes in various locations and dissolves it in water to spray plants and her own skin.

Unlike her stealthy common cousin, the female yellow fever mosquito prefers to feed on humans and doesn’t wait for nightfall to take a bite. Aedes aegypti, an aggressive urban mosquito commonly known as the yellow fever mosquito, was first identified in four North Las Vegas zip codes in 2017. By 2022, the yellow fever mosquito was found reproducing in eight more zip codes in Southern Nevada.

Richard Oxborough plucked a vial of human blood from the rack on his lab bench. The 51ԹϺ researcher warmed the blood and fed it to a colony of mosquitoes. The critters won’t be quite as voracious as normal because Oxborough didn’t have the chance to starve them, he quipped.

While mosquitoes can be annoying to humans, they can also be dangers for our four-legged friends. As a dog owner, it's something I haven't had to really worry about living here in the desert ..... at least until now.
Doug Hairgrove and Warren “Woody” Wood were together for 65 years. They met in college in 1959, worked side by side for more than three decades at a Southern California junior high school and got married in 2008 at their desert home in Palm Springs, California.

Whether you’re having a backyard cookout or camping with your family, nothing puts a damper quite as fast as biting insects like mosquitoes, flies and ticks. To help keep bites at bay, the best bug repellents contain safe and proven effective ingredients—and last for hours. For example, our top recommendation, the Ranger Ready Insect Repellent Spray, has an odorless formula that uses 20% picaridin and lasts for up to 12 hours.
With heat waves breaking records this summer in various parts of the world, it has become imperative that we become aware of the signs of heat exhaustion and take proper steps to avoid it. Heat exhaustion occurs when the body overheats (gets too hot) and cannot easily restore its normal temperature if left untreated and the underlying conditions not corrected. A common cause is excessive physical activity or staying for prolonged periods of time in hot and humid weather conditions. During physical activity or exercise, the body starts to lose water through sweating and that can lead to dehydration which is a common contributor to heat exhaustion.
More mosquitoes in Southern Nevada are testing positive for West Nile virus than ever before, and a new species in the region is making it harder to get rid of the pests.

More mosquitoes in Southern Nevada are testing positive for West Nile virus, but that isn't the only concern. The populations of certain mosquitoes are exploding here, which is why many of us are getting more bites compared to years past.