Skin lesions afflict troops in Iraq

[aeon flux]

WMDs found: Saddam's sand flies.

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"we started seeing soldiers basically eaten alive," Coleman says. "They'd get a hundred, in some cases 1,000, bites in a single night."

Nearly 150 U.S. soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) have been diagnosed with a parasitic skin disease, and hundreds more could unknowingly be infected, doctors will report Friday.
Doctors fear that soldiers returning from the front might consult doctors in the USA who have never seen the disease. Complicating matters: It has an incubation period of six months, on average, so a person infected in September may not show symptoms until March. Also, the best drug to treat it is not licensed in the USA.

Leishmaniasis (LEASH-man-EYE-uh-sis), which soldiers call the "Baghdad Boil," is carried by biting sand flies and doesn't spread from person to person. It causes skin lesions that if untreated may take months, even years, to heal and can be disfiguring, doctors say.

So far, 148 soldiers have confirmed cases, but hundreds more are expected, says entomologist and Army Lt. Col. Russell Coleman, who spent 10 months in Iraq with the 520th Theater Army Medical Laboratory. Coleman was to report the outbreak Friday to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which is meeting in Philadelphia.


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[grytpype]

1. Do a Google image search for Leishmaniasis...

... warning, it's very disturbing...

[Name removed]

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