Posted by Librarian on 4/2/2002, 4:23 pm

Late 1994 Suspected Mites Just Bugs, Spider By Billl Swindell, WORLD Staff Writer MUSKOGEE - Health Officials announced test results Tuesday on two samples submitted by people who thought they were infected with a parasitic mite. The samples turned out to b harmless insects. Ron Reeves, the administrator for the Muskogee County Health Office, said a family came to him last week and provided two jars ugs that they found at their home. Researchers a the State Department of Health in Oklahoma City, identified them as two fruit flies, a spider and numerous lint fibers, Reeves said. In a separate test, an Oklahoma State University parasitologist found that samples submitted by a family who had made the same claim were buffalo gnats, harmless mosquito-like insects. An anonymous letter mailed to reports in northeastern Oklahoma warned of an epidemic spreading throughout Cherokee and Muskogee counties. The letter said a Tahlequah woman was supposed to have broken out with a rash around Thanksgiving and was supposed to have been told by a doctor that she had pigeon mites. The letter claimed that the parasite was spreading and there was no cure. Reeves, citing confidentiality laws, would not say whether his samples and those studied at OSU were from the same family. But he said only one family had come to his office, and he considered the case closed. <end of article> NOTE: Black Flies and Buffalo Gnats (Simuliidae) are major vectors of Onchocerciasis. There was no mention of this fact in these articles, and in fact no mention that even if the Black Flies were not vectors of Onchocerciasis in Oklahoma, according to an entomology book, "horses may be killed by the bites of blackflies, death resulting from a pathologic reaction to the blackfly saliva rather than from loss of blood." and "Blackflies transmit at least one duck disease similar in many respects to malaria." Reference: A Textbook of Entomology Herbert H. Ross.