A New School in American Samoa

Leptospirosis, American Samoa

To the Editor: Leptospirosis is common in the Pacifi c Islands (66.4 cases/100,000 population/ year compared with 5 cases/100,000 population/year globally) (1) and is often misdiagnosed as dengue because of overlapping clinical features, poor awareness, and inadequate diagnostic facilities (2,3). Clinical manifestations range from asymptomatic to severe disease with pulmonary hemorrhage and ren...

Seroprevalence of Dengue in American Samoa, 2010

324 Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 19, No. 2, February 2013 in Italy and Spain (1,9). In southern European countries, TOSV is mostly transmitted by P. perniciosus and P. perfiliewi sandflies (1,6,9), whereas P. perniciosus, P. longicuspis, and P. perfiliewi are the most abundant sandfly species in northern Tunisia. It is therefore probable that TOSV is transmitted by sand...

Brown Root Rot Disease in American Samoa

Phellinus noxius causes root and lower stem rot of woody plants throughout the South Pacific region. Its hosts include rubber, mahogany, cacao, and many timber, fruit and landscape trees. Though endemic to the tropics, we found no reports describing brown root rot disease in native forests, exclusively. Incidence, distribution and host range of P. noxius were measured in primary and secondary r...

Plant Parasitic Algae (trentepohliales, Chlorophyta) in American Samoa

Emergence of new leptospiral serovars in American Samoa - ascertainment or ecological change?

BACKGROUND Leptospirosis has recently been discussed as an emerging infectious disease in many contexts, including changes in environmental drivers of disease transmission and the emergence of serovars. In this paper, we report the epidemiology of leptospiral serovars from our study of human leptospirosis in American Samoa in 2010, present evidence of recent serovar emergence, and discuss the p...