Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome: The Sound of a Mouse Roaring

In the spring of 1993, a mouse roared. It was an unusual sound that took months to be registered by astute clinicians and the public health system [1]. Today, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) is widely recognized as a distinctive clinical entity; it is associated with a precipitous cardiorespiratory decomposition, thrombocytopenia, and atypical lymphocytes on a peripheral blood smear and is transmitted by rodents throughout the Americas [2]. The deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) and Sin Nombre virus were quickly identified as the primary reservoir and etiological agent of disease, respectively, in the originally recognized outbreak in the southwestern United States