Epidemic Polyarthritis in South Australia: Report of an Outbreak in 1971

The reappearance, in early 1971, of epidemic polyarthritis in towns situated along the River Murray in South Australia Is recorded. Arthritis was a more prominent feature than in the outbreak described In 1956, when the disease was last seen in these towns. Laboratory studies confirmed the association between the disease and a virus closely related to the Ross River virus, a member of the Group A arthropod-borne virus group. It Is speculated that the virus may have been introduced by man into an altered ecological situation which favoured a temporary virus reservoir.