Yesterday, I was in Birmingham, UK, giving a keynote address at the British Equine Veterinary Association Congress (and HRH Princess Anne was in the audience and I didn’t put her to sleep… I’ll take that as a win).
After finishing my talks I was walking back to the conference centre when I heard someone yelling.
If I’m talking to veterinarians or veterinary students about infectious diseases and I mention Capnocytophaga canimorsus, I usually get a blank stare (or “capno-what?”). If I’m talking to physicians, it’s usually the same response, unless they’re infectious disease physicians or trainees (but I still get “capno-what?” from some of them on
Next in the World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) series is a recycled post about our cat Rumple from this past summer. It’s not just because I’m lazy. It’s largely because it’s a great topic and an issue for which there’s a lot of unnecessary antibiotic use (especially in cats).
Rumple’s an indoor-outdoor cat that
My own animals provide frequent fodder for this blog, both good and bad. Rumple’s been featured a few times before, and his latest escapade is a great antimicrobial stewardship case.
Rumple’s an indoor-outdoor cat that we adopted years ago through Guelph Humane Society’s working cat program. He was deemed unsuitable for a household, so we
A brief report in the latest edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal describes a child with lymphadenopathy (swollen lymph nodes) due to cat scratch disease.
I was a bit surprised to see a straightforward case like this published in such a journal, but it’s a good reminder of a few issues.
Cat scratch
The headline’s true, but a bit sensational. However, it’s from a recent paper that has attracted a lot of attention: Being licked by a dog can be fatal: Capnocytophaga canimorsus sepsis with purpura fulminans in an immunocompetent man (Mader et al. 2019).
This recent fatal Capnocytophaga canimorsus infection in a German man has gotten
A colleague sent this leading in with “you can’t make this stuff up.” He was right.
Here’s the Cole’s notes version of the story of a couple’s visit to a Louisiana truck stop.
Part of me thinks this is interesting and part of me wonders why it’s noteworthy. Let’s go with the first thought and consider the interesting aspects of a presentation at the recent ASM Microbe 2019 Conference, “79 cases of pet-associated Pasteurella multocida infections in a 30-month period with reports of novel modes of
When I talk to veterinary and public health audiences about zoonotic diseases, I often talk about rat bite fever because it highlights some common issues that are important to keep in mind.
Usually, I start by presenting a case of a child with a fever and rash.
Then, I mention that someone finally asked about
Tularemia is a nasty bacterial disease. The bug that causes it, Francisella tularensis, is a category A bioterrorism agent (along with things like anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox and Ebola virus). It’s classified as that because it’s highly transmissible and causes serious disease, so it’s something you definitely don’t want.
The bacterium circulates in the
