MARION, Ill. (KYTX) - The Heartland Virus is significant to the area for a few reasons.
First off, it's a good example of being able to make an important medical discovery in a smaller city.
Secondly, the name Heartland Virus will always be synonymous with this region of the world and the medical center where it was first identified in two Missouri farmers.
Just more than three years ago, they walked into Heartland Regional Medical Center with an array of health issues.
Robert Wonderly was one of them.
"Felt like my chest was real heavy and my body felt," he said. "I don't know if you call it itchy or your skin was moving,"
Wonderly thought he might be having a heart attack, but his tests showed no sign for concern.
Dr. Scott Folk, an infectious disease doctor at Heartland, was brought in to examine Wonderly.
Folk had also seen Larry Smithers, another farmer, who had fallen ill after a tick bite.
Dr. Folk immediately noticed similarities between the patients' symptoms.
"Fever, headache, chills, nausea, diarrhea, low white blood count, low platelets, abnormal liver," the doctor said.
Blood samples from the two farmers were immediately sent to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.
After months of testing, the CDC determined that the Missouri farmers had a new, unique virus, now named Heartland virus.
There are still a lot of questions that remain about the virus, like if other insects carry it and where the virus source can be found in nature. But the two farmers are just hopeful that the new medical discovery will lead to better treatments and an eventual cure.
