I get a surprising number of emails from people concerned about Baylisascaris procyonis, the raccoon roundworm. Some are just a bit concerned while others are almost paralyzed by fear at the thought of this parasite lurking in the environment. Most of my responses are largely re-assuring people that the risk is very limited
As per usual, the annual US rabies state-of-the-union has been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Ma et al. 2023). It’s the same general information every year, but always a good reminder of the ongoing challenges with rabies here in North America.
Here are some highlights from the animal-related
As the unprecedented global H5N1 avian flu outbreak continues (with no real end in sight), and as we get the spring mix of migrating birds, mingling bird populations, more active wildlife and a pending crop of baby wild critters, concerns about spillover infections from birds to mammals are on the rise.
The current H5N1 influenza
The ongoing H5N1 avian influenza outbreak is an unprecedented event in its size, scope and duration (but it’s not getting much press anymore these days). As infections continue to occur is birds in large numbers over a vast geographic range, we worry about spillover events into other species.
There have now been many reports of
I’ve written (ranted?) about this before – namely the misuse of antimicrobials intended for treatment of aquarium fish in other species. Usually such posts are followed by a deluge of nasty emails along with a bunch of curious requests for links to fish antibiotic sellers (8% kickback available!).
Another sponsorship request came in this morning
Since rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus type II (RHDV2) made its first incursion into Canada, and again more recently with the first detection of this virus in Ontario, there’s been a lot of interest in vaccination of rabbits (rabbits and hares are the only species known to be affected). Effective vaccines are available for this
Headline writers are probably going to screw up my day tomorrow by sensationalizing this, but a new paper in the journal Animals (Fiorito et al. 2022) describes SARS-CoV-2 infection in cattle in Italy. (It’s an MDPI journal, and I take anything published there with a big grain of salt given their low standards, but this
I very commonly get emails from vets like this:
My client was diagnosed with [insert various diseases here] and their physician said they probably got it from their [insert various pets here] and as a result they want the animal [tested / treated / rehomed].
As the current international monkeypox outbreak in people continues, more consideration is being given to the potential impact on, and subsequently from, animals. Animals are the reservoirs for this virus, although there are lots of gaps in our knowledge of the species monkeypox virus can infect.
The current cases outside of Africa are being spread
Local transmission of monkeypox wasn’t on my 2022 bingo card, but I guess we’re learning to expect the unexpected. I commonly talk about monkeypox when discussing zoonotic diseases, especially those associated with importation of animals, as this was highlighted by an outbreak of monkeypox in the US associated with imported rodents from Africa in 2003
