Lethal Emergence: Tracing the rise of dengue fever in the Americas
By Nathan Seppa
A spate of deadly outbreaks of dengue fever in Latin America in recent years stems from the 1994 arrival of a potent version of the disease that is endemic to India, genetic analyses of viruses reveal. That viral incursion followed the 1981 arrival of another lethal dengue strain in Cuba, apparently from Africa. These two variants have together changed dengue fever in the New World from at most a painful ailment into a potential killer.