Question

You are a doctor checking over a patient in your office. The symptoms (and subsequent lab tests) all match elephantiasis, a lymphatic infection caused by worms and transmitted by a mosquito. This disease is not found in North America. Please choose the most likely explanation for this patient having this disease.

Answer 1

Elephantiasis in a region where it is not found is most likely due to the patient traveling or living in a tropical or subtropical region where the disease is endemic.

Step-by-step explanation:

The most likely explanation for the patient having elephantiasis in a region where this disease is not found is that the patient has traveled to or lived in a tropical or subtropical region where elephantiasis is endemic. Elephantiasis is caused by parasitic roundworms that are transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes. If a person is bitten by an infected mosquito in an endemic region and later travels to North America, they can still develop the disease due to the long incubation period of the infection.