Can Diseases Cross Oceans By Wind?

Aneurysms in the coronary arteries of a Kawasaki victim. Public domain; click for source.

That’s the question I examine in my first feature story for Nature , published today online and in the print magazine April 5. A bizarre disease of toddlers and infants called Kawasaki Disease — which only emerged in the 1960s in Japan — causes little kids to develop rash; fever; swollen hands, feet, and lymph nodes; red tongue and cracked lips; and, bizarrely, to develop coronary artery aneurysms that can kill them right away or years later by heart attacks in otherwise totally healthy young adults.