A Canadian man’s month went from bad to worse after he discovered a rat in his toilet. In a recent case report, the man’s doctors described how he contracted an unusual and severe infection from a rodent bite that ultimately landed him in intensive care. Thankfully, his treatment was successful.
The case is detailed It was published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association in January of this year. According to reports, the 76-year-old Montreal resident went to the local emergency room because of fever, headache and abdominal pain that had lasted for three days. About three weeks ago, he unfortunately found a rat in the toilet. When he tried to remove the sewer animal, it bit two of his fingers. The man immediately went to the emergency room, where his wounds were treated and given a tetanus booster shot. By the time he went to the emergency room a second time, the wound itself had healed well, but tests revealed he had sepsis — a systemic, life-threatening inflammation often caused by infection — to which he was admitted. ICU.
Given the bite and his symptoms, doctors suspected he was either infected with rat-bite fever, an infectious disease caused by several bacteria commonly found in rodent mouths; leptospirosiscaused Leptospira bacteria. Both conditions can be treated with the same medications, so doctors quickly gave the man intravenous antibiotics while awaiting further tests. Eventually, he was diagnosed with leptospirosis.
Not everyone is infected Leptospira When the bacteria makes you sick, the initial non-specific symptoms it may cause, such as fever, chills and muscle aches, make diagnosis difficult. Sometimes people recover from the first round of illness, but then go through a second phase in which the infection severely damages the liver, kidneys and brain. Severe leptospirosis has a mortality rate of up to 15%.
What makes this case even stranger than most is that leptospirosis is not usually contracted from a rat bite. The bacteria are not shed naturally in the rodents’ saliva, but in their urine. As a result, people often contract the virus through direct contact with urine or contact with food and water contaminated with infected urine (which is one reason storms that cause flooding can trigger outbreaks). As far as doctors know, the man’s infection may have been caused by the furry attacker temporarily contaminating his own mouth with bacteria-soaked urine before biting him.
Despite the severity of his condition, the man responded well to antibiotics and other treatments. He was discharged from the intensive care unit three days later and successfully completed the remaining course of oral antibiotics.
Although the bacteria that cause leptospirosis are found around the world, they are more common in tropical areas, and human cases are rarely reported Canada or us However, many animal species can be infected with leptospirosis and can spread it to humans, including our pets.And this disease is expected This phenomenon has become more common over time, in part because climate change increases the risk of extreme weather events such as severe flooding.
The authors of the case report note that there is no clear consensus on whether to give people prophylactic antibiotics after being bitten by a rat. But given evidence from some studies that antibiotics can prevent leptospirosis in people at high risk of exposure and that bites can spread other bacterial infections, such as rat-bite fever, they believe clinical trials should be conducted to test this approach.
They write: “Although antibiotic prophylaxis after rat bites remains an open question, rat bites may require antibiotic prophylaxis because they often cause rat bite fever and can cause puncture wounds with a higher risk of infection. “