Dirofilariasis is a long ignored disease indigenous to most areas of the United States. When a person has this disease there are no obvious signs that are visible to the physician and there is no approved serological tests for the disease. A physician essentially has no tools to help them diagnose it. The patients may present very diverse and nondescript medical issues but nothing will likely point that physician at making a correct diagnosis. Even if the doctor could diagnose this disease there is still no treatment for the disease in humans. Prescribing highly toxic medications to a patient where the doctor can not even prove that the patient has this disease is unlikely. We desperately need a test for this disease as it is nearly impossible to study any disease where you can not even tell who has it.
One insect byte is all it takes to acquire this very stealthy disease. Because there is no test nobody ever gets diagnosed with the occult form of this disease. Without even a single diagnosis there can be no statistics to collect, and without statistics there is no money set aside for research that might otherwise develop a viable test for the disease. It is an endless cycle of waiting because without a medical test it is not even possible to even find the subjects with whom to study the pathology and progression of the disease. Even the best of scientists can not possibly study a disease if they can not determine who even has the disease.