Looking for Ways to Control Leptospirosis

aginfo

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It's not often you hear much about leptospirosis, which is a rare and severe disease that affects humans and animals. One reason may be because symptoms can be mistaken for those of other diseases.

Leptospirosis is a contagious disease caused by Leptospira bacteria. It's transmitted naturally from infected domestic animals and wildlife to humans through urine-contaminated water, food or soil. The disease can cause a severe infection in humans. Symptoms include headaches, fever, vomiting, diarrhea and chills.

Without treatment, people infected with the disease can suffer from kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure and respiratory distress.

"Leptospirosis occurs on a periodic basis in endemic areas like Brazil," says Richard Zuerner, a retired microbiologist who worked at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. "Some of the people infected will experience pulmonary hemorrhage, which can lead to a very rapid and painful death."

In livestock such as cattle, leptospirosis can cause abortions, stillbirths, lower fertility and reduced milk production, Zuerner says. It can also result in uveitis, a potential cause of blindness in horses.

Zuerner and his colleagues at NADC looked at the spread of leptospirosis in sea lions, tested vaccines for cattle, and examined the hamster as a model to better understand the disease.

Source for Sick Sea Lions

The latest incident in 2011 of sick and dying sea lions washing ashore along the West Coast is the kind of driving force that keeps scientists searching for answers as to how Leptospira got into California sea lion populations. This has been a mystery since the disease was first discovered in these mammals in the 1970s.

Studying leptospirosis in sea lions could provide more information about the disease in wildlife and reduce the potential risk to public health. Infected mammals stranded along beaches pose a threat to people who come to their rescue, risking exposure to the disease.


Zuerner and David Alt, a veterinary medical officer in NADC's Infectious Bacterial Diseases Research Unit, teamed with scientists at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., to identify the disease strain that causes infection in sea lions. They looked at urine and kidney samples of infected mammals and determined that the responsible strain was L. interrogans serovar Pomona, which also affects cattle and other species.

California sea lions periodically undergo acute infection outbreaks, Zuerner says. However, research indicates that they are becoming maintenance hosts.

"Maintenance hosts normally carry the bacteria and show few outward signs of infection," Zuerner says, "whereas accidental hosts, like humans, often come down with a severe infection."

More at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/np/ha/han49.htm
 
 
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