A local county newspaper had a front page headline about a zoning amendment that was approved to allow for a feeder rodent facility that will produce about 10 000 rodents a week (I know, apparently there aren’t a lot of big things happen around here). Co-incidentally, a couple days later, I received an alert and
Cowpox from a cat? Not as strange as it seems.
Cowpox is a disease with a misleading name. It would be reasonable to assume that cowpox comes from cows.
It doesn’t. (Just like monkeypox doesn’t come from monkeys.)
Cowpox is a viral infection and the natural reservoirs are actually rodents. Humans, cats and cows are amongst the more common "accidental hosts" – species that get
Rat bite fever info sheet
The latest Worms & Germs info sheet is about rat bite fever. It’s available by clicking here, and you can also find it along with all of our other info sheets on the Worms & Germs Resources – Pets page.
Hedgehog Salmonella update
I’m just back from vacation (luckily, with no infectious disease stories to write), but now I have to catch up on a few posts. One easy one that was waiting for me in my inbox was about Salmonella and hedgehogs.
I’ve written before about biohazardous hedgehogs, and more details about the US 2011-2013 multi-state
Rat bite fever in a person with HIV/AIDS
A recent report in the journal Infection (Chean et al. 2012) describes rat bite fever in a patient with AIDS. I’ve written about rat bite fever before, and it’s not really a surprising case report. Streptobacillus moniliformis, the bug that causes the disease, is found in the mouths of most rats (and
Ferret legging…a sport?
With the lingering NHL strike, TV networks are looking for replacement sports. One of my PhD students (who claims he doesn’t spend too much time playing around on the internet but keeps coming up with these gems) sent me information about one sport that’s not coming to a network near you.
Yes, it’s ferret
LCMV in rodent facility workers
I’ve written about lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) before, as an interesting but pretty uncommon rodent-associated disease. Human infections are mainly associated with handling rodents, although other routes of transmission, such as organ transplantation from an infected donor, have also been reported. Being a disease associated with rodents and considering how rodents are produced in North
2011 US Rabies recap
The annual US rabies surveillance report has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Blanton et al 2012). There’s not really anything earth-shattering in it, but it’s a good overview of the rabies diagnoses in the US from 2011. As always, it only provides a
Biohazardous hedgehogs
When I give talks about pet therapy animals, I talk about appropriate and inappropriate animals. On one slide I have a picture of a hedgehog, and I use it as an example of an animal that sometimes makes its way into pet therapy programs, despite standard guidelines to the contrary. This is a species that raises
Guinea pigs and ringworm
As with most "pocket pets," guinea pigs don’t get a lot of attention in the scientific literature. As a result, we are limited in what we know about certain diseases in this species, and we tend to rely a lot on personal experience, small case studies and extrapolation from other species. It’s not that these