Arboviruses like snowshoe hare virus are spread by mosquitoes.

The mosquitoes that transmit this virus, uh, or the vectors, they're primarily the Aedes and the Culiceta species of mosquitoes.

And those species are pretty widespread and abundant through basically all of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, um, as well as the northern states of the United States, so kind of bordering Canada.

And, um, there's been a lot of studies looking at which particular mosquitoes harbor snowshoe hare virus, and it's actually been isolated in a lot of the field captured mosquitoes of both the Aedes and the Culiceta species.

So how did all the specialists in the hospital collaborate to determine the cause of the children's symptoms?

Their care was actually kind of overlapping between different teams within the hospital, so obviously the general pediatrics team, pediatric neurology team, the infectious diseases team.

And I think it was an interesting interplay between all of those different kind of subspecialists and trying to piece together the diagnosis because initially when we didn't really have that diagnosis, that it's snowshoe hare virus meningitis encephalitis, there was a lot of different differentials, be it bacterial meningitis, other viral meningitis encephalitis, or even autoimmune encephalitis.

So there was a lot of kind of brainstorming and probli- problem-solving happening behind the scenes with all of those different subspecialists.

Do you have a feeling for why that might be?

Part of the reason why people develop skin cancers, including melanoma, is through ultraviolet light exposure.

Now, that may be from the sunlight, and that's probably the commonest cause.

So outdoor activities and historically people that used to work outdoors, so on farms.

And more recently, we have a lot more time for leisure activities outdoors, whether that's tennis or golf or walking, uh, or indeed sunny holidays abroad, all of which increase our sun exposure to levels probably many of our ancestors weren't used to reaching.

The other phenomenon that we are seeing more and more now is, uh, artificial ultraviolet light exposure in the form of sunbeds, and they've become more popular as time's gone on.

And obviously taking steps to minimize sun damage in the meantime must be the order of the day, sun cream and so on.

on.Absolutely.