NEW MARKET, NH —
The wife of a Newmarket man diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis said Friday it took a month for test results to confirm the disease.
There have been four confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease in New Hampshire this year.
Rachel Dube said her husband, Scott Dube, first started showing signs of EEE in mid-August. It took 10 days to get tested, but the diagnosis was made on Monday.
“From (August) 19th until I was discharged from the hospital, I asked them to test me for EEE every day,” Rachel Dube said.
Scott Dube works outside all day in South Hampton, right next to Kensington, where new cases of EEE have been reported this year.
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It’s been 10 years since New Hampshire doctors last diagnosed a human case of EEE, with cases breaking the trend in August.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, symptoms of EEE include headache, fatigue, and nausea. In some cases, it can be fatal. There is no treatment for EEE other than supportive care.
Rachel Dube said she had been researching EEE and thought her husband’s symptoms were similar. She said doctors at Portsmouth Regional Hospital told her it appeared to be meningitis, which can be contagious. She said she wished doctors had tested him for EEE sooner.
“I had to take my 3-year-old to get a really painful injection to keep him from getting sick,” she said. “So it was really stressful, and it would have been a lot less stressful if I had gotten tested.”
Portsmouth Regional Hospital officials said they do not routinely test for EEE because it is such a rare disease.
“Our health care workers first check for more common bacterial and viral infections, which can be treated with antibiotics and antivirals. If these tests do not yield a diagnosis, the state or other reference facility, EEE, the patient is receiving supportive care to help with recovery, but there is no antiviral treatment,” Portsmouth Regional Hospital spokeswoman Ellen Miller said.
“Tests for EEE are performed in special laboratories and can take several weeks to produce results. This means that results that are useful for immediate treatment are not immediately available. This test “It’s done primarily for public health surveillance and CDC tracking. But we’re hopeful that giving patients a diagnosis, even after they’ve recovered, will help them find closure.” Miller added.
