By Scott Weese on Posted in BirdsWhy is it that zoonotic disease case reports in the scientific literature sometimes get titles that are…well, let’s just say “creative.” A recent example of a strange headline for an interesting case report is “The Brief Case: A Fishy Tale Prevents Digital Doom following Polly’s Peck—the Importance of Pets in a Comprehensive Medical History” published in… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsA few sentences into a Washington Post article entitled “A dog bite sent him to the ER. A cascade of missteps nearly killed him”, I was thinking, “This sounds like a pretty typical Capnocytophaga canimorsus infection. I wonder if this guy lost his spleen earlier in life.” It turns out that was true. Unfortunately, neither… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in CatsI’ve held off writing about this, but needed to get to it sooner or later. A recent article in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (Nelson et al 2016) has spurred a serious of over-exaggerated and sometimes downright comical headlines. “Kittens can cause death; US study” is an Australian example of over-the-top reporting, probably by people who… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsI spend a lot of time talking about “emerging” infectious diseases. Some of these are truly emerging (i.e. new) diseases, some are conditions we couldn’t diagnose well before but now recognize more easily, and some are disease that have been there all along and are just getting more attention. However, while emerging infectious disease (especially zoonotic… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsCapnocytophaga canimorsus is a bit of an obscure bacterium. When I talk about it to veterinary or physician audiences, I’m usually met with blank stares – not surprising, since it’s not really mentioned in veterinary or medical school, from what I can tell. It’s a rare cause of infection, but a nasty one. The fact that it’s… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Dogs,RabiesA Florida couple is suing their neighbour in an attempt to get the neighbour’s dog euthanized for rabies testing. The dog attacked the couple’s beagle, and the wife was bitten while intervening (as was her sister). Because there was a bite, it’s important to consider the potential for rabies exposure and take appropriate actions. But… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Cats,DogsThe Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology has been good, recently, for a zoonotic disease article or two. The latest edition has a report of Pasteurella multocida infections of prosthetic joints (Lam et al. 2015). Pasteurella multocida is a bacterium that’s commonly found in the mouths of dogs and cats, and can cause… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsDog bites continue to be a major cause of injury, especially in kids. Here are a few recent papers with some interesting information on this topic. A review of hospitalizations from dog bites in Ireland (O Suilleabhain et al. The Veterinary Journal 2015) had a few noteworthy findings: There were 3164 hospitalizations during the study… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsFrom CTVnews.ca "A Brazilian [soccer] player was taken to a hospital for an anti-rabies shot after being bitten by a police dog during a match. The incident happened in the second half of a first-division game between Democrata and Tupi on Sunday in the Minas Gerais state regional championship. Democrata striker Joao Paulo was bit… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Other animalsAccording to Groundhog Day lore, if the groundhog sees its shadow, you’re in for six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t spring is around the corner. So, what does it mean when the critter draws blood? Sun Prairie, Wisconsin residents will find out this year, after Jimmy the Groundhog bit the town’s mayor. After… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Pocket petsAs reported on WKTR NewsChannel 3 in Virginia: “An employee at PetSmart [in Williamburg, Virginia] says she was bitten by a rat on display and is now worried she has rabies. She feels the store isn’t doing enough to help her find out if she has it. Victoria Verbeeck says she was working at the… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsA Brockton, MA dog was euthanized after being bitten by a rabid skunk, because of a combination of the skunk’s rabies diagnosis, a relatively minor lapse in the dog’s vaccinations, and regulatory inflexibility. The ten-year-old Schnauzer cross was bitten in its own yard, and the skunk was subsequently caught, tested and diagnosed as rabid. Clearly,… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsOK…time to get back to work writing. A couple weeks of conference organizing and uncountable Ebola calls are hopefully winding down, so back to the neglected blog. This bug is an obscure one that I write about regularly: Capnocytophaga canimorus. It’s found in the mouth of most dogs, so people are commonly exposed to it.… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in CatsThe credit (or blame) for the alliteration goes to colleague and frequent blog material supplier Dr. Stephen Page. It relates to an article in the prestigious medical journal Lancet (Kagihara et al. 2014) entitled “A fatal pasteurella empyema.” The article describes the case of a 60-year-old man from Honolulu who was admitted to hospital in… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Other animals"A monkey was placed under a six-month quarantine on Tuesday after it reportedly bit a woman at a Beaumont restaurant on Sunday…" Oh, where to start… Why do people feel the need to have monkeys as pets? I realize that they’re fascinating critters, but is it in the best interests of the monkey and the… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Other animalsThat’s a great title that I can’t take credit for. A colleague (and regular supplier of papers for blog posts) Dr. Stephen Page send me a paper from the Journal of Clinical Microbiology with a more convoluted title “The Capnocytophaga canimosus isolate that caused sepsis in an immunosufficient man was transmitted by the large pine… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Other animalsLet’s put this one in the "smart people doing stupid things" file. Some well-intentioned people at Washington University in St. Louis thought they’d help relieve stress during exam time by bringing in a petting zoo – that unfortunately included "Boo Boo" the biting bear. As you can likely guess, problems ensued. 18 students sustained skin-breaking… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Other animalsThere’s been some controversy in the past regarding allowing pets to sleep in or on the bed. I don’t get too worked up about it, since I think it’s very low-risk in terms of disease transmission for most pets and households, but a variety if reasons for prohibiting this practice have been given. I haven’t… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Pocket petsA couple months ago, I wrote about a family suing PetsMart over a case of rat bite fever in a child. Now, a San Diego family is suing PetCo after their ten-year-old son died of the same infection. Rat bite fever is a bacterial infection caused by Streptobacillus moniliformis, and it is almost always associated… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in CatsIt’s a scary sounding headline: “Cat Bites Pose Risk Of Infection As 1 In 3 Patients Bitten Hospitalized; Teeth Inject Bacteria Into Joints, Tissue” and it cites a research article from the Mayo Clinic in the Journal of Hand Surgery (Babovic et al 2014). Cat bites are nasty. The mouth of any cat harbours thousands… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsA recent high profile dog-bite death in the US has refocused discussion on bites and their causes. Co-incidentally, a paper in a recent edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Patronek et al 2013, Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009)) also addresses this… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in Pocket petsA Colorado family is suing PetsMart and a rat supplier after their son developed rat bite fever (RBF), following a bite from a newly acquired rat. Lawsuits seem to be increasingly common after zoonotic infections, which is probably more of a reflection of an increasing tendency for people to sue, not an increasing occurrence of… Continue Reading
By Scott Weese on Posted in DogsI write about Capnocytophaga canimorsus regularly… disproportionately so, since it’s a rare cause of disease in people. However, though rare, when disease does happen it’s usually serious, and cases illustrate some important basic concepts that apply more broadly to other zoonotic diseases from pets. The title of this post is from the latest edition of… Continue Reading
By Maureen Anderson on Posted in DogsWe’ve just posted a new info sheet about Capnocytophaga. One member of this bacterial group in particular, Capnocytophaga canimorsus, makes the news periodically because it can cause devastating infection in some individuals, like the Ottawa woman who lost three limbs after one of her own dogs accidentally bit her. This kind of severe infection, which… Continue Reading
