learning objectives: ! List the risk factors for Bartonella infections. ! Explain how and where humans and animals can become infected. ! Explain how to diagnose, treat and prevent cat-scratch disease. ! List recommendations you can provide to pet owners about treatment and prevention. ! List the contraindications when prescribing medications for cat-scratch disease. ! List the risk factors for...

Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases have become a major global environmental problem with important public health, economic, and political consequences. The etiologic agents of most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, and anthropogenic environmental changes that affect wildlife communities are increasingly implicated in disease emergence and spread. Although increased disease in...

Leptospirosis is an endemic disease in Malaysia and recently has received increasing attention mainly due to several recent incidents that have resulted in human mortality which have alarmed health professionals in Malaysia. The increasing incidence of leptospirosis in forested regions is associated with the bacteria infecting small wild mammals other than rats. Infection in wildlife could resu...

We might have had an earlier identification of West Nile virus ten years ago had people reported that they were seeing dead crows in their backyards. This position paper suggests a wildlife monitoring system for far upstream detection of zoonotic disease outbreaks. Our system integrates wildlife surveillance from experts, news organizations, citizen scientists, and incidental observers. We outl...

virus persistence, and flaviviral recombination as a mechanism of flaviviral evolution. In addition, data were presented that illustrated the persistence of, and immune modulation by, alphaviruses, which, in concert, allow the virus to replicate while preventing the host from responding to its benefit. Other than the classical techniques of preventing infection, little was mentioned about disea...

BACKGROUND Leptospirosis is a worldwide zoonotic bacterial disease caused by infection with leptospires. Leptospirosis in humans and livestock is an endemic and epidemic disease in Thailand. Livestock may act as reservoirs for leptospires and source for human infection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Data on leptospirosis infection in humans and livestock (Buffaloes, Cattle, and Pigs) species...

Bats are the natural reservoirs of a number of high-impact viral zoonoses. We present a quantitative analysis to address the hypothesis that bats are unique in their propensity to host zoonotic viruses based on a comparison with rodents, another important host order. We found that bats indeed host more zoonotic viruses per species than rodents, and we identified life-history and ecological fact...

The close contact between household pets and people offers favourable conditions for bacterial transmission. In this article, the aetiology, prevalence, transmission, impact on human health and preventative measures are summarized for selected bacterial zoonoses transmissible by household pets. Six zoonoses representing distinct transmission routes were selected arbitrarily based on the availab...

Rapid changes in human behavior, resource utilization, and other extrinsic environmental factors continue to threaten the current distribution of several endemic and historically neglected zoonoses in many developing regions worldwide. There are numerous examples of zoonotic diseases which have circulated within relatively localized geographical areas for some time, before emerging into new reg...

Vol. 7, No. 3 Supplement, June 2001 Emerging Infectious Diseases 537 Emerging Zoonotic Bacterial and Parasitic Diseases Corrie Brown from the University of Georgia discussed 15 diseases common to humans and animals, with a brief synopsis of how each disease is transmitted from animals to humans, the major animal reservoirs, and factors influencing the emergence of these diseases as human pathog...