West Nile virus

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>]

For what it's worth, we recently had a batch of our horses tested for
antibodies to West Nile and some other encephalitis by a US Navy Medical
Research unit here. To our surprise, most of them tested positive to both
strains. The only ones who didn't were some young ones, like my two colts
who are 2 1/2 and a yearling. But none of us have been aware of our horses
being ill with anything like encephalitis, with the exception of one rider
whose 20+ stallion was diagnosed with it this fall, prompting the tests.
Massaoud pulled through just fine and will be participating in the 20 km
ride tomorrow. He had been tested before for antibodies as part of another
study and had no West Nile antibodies at that time so we know that he had
West Nile this time.  Whether the virus in New York is really the same as we
have here, I don't know, but since virtually all of our horses, Arabs and
imports alike, have had West Nile without anyone knowing, hopefully there is
no cause for panic. Now if they'll test the humans too, I'm sure there are
more surprises in store.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg