India, Oct. 23 -- France's report on Thursday of the first known human case of Shamonda, a cattle virus spread by biting midges that reached Europe only this summer, has drawn attention to a pathogen known in livestock since the 1960s but never before found in a person.

The patient, a man in his 60s from the Lyon area according to the local newspaper Le Progres, was severely immunocompromised and was being treated for a serious illness when he died in early October, Reuters reported. French authorities suspect he was infected through a midge bite in eastern France, where the virus circulated among animals in spring and summer. The country's health and agriculture ministries said the neurological complications he developed before his deat...