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Cat-scratch disease, as the name suggests, is said to be spread by cats. It’s long been considered a mild illness, but a study now supposedly finds that people are getting more serious complications, which can be fatal.
They are also saying that kissing kittens increases the risk of being infected.
“The scope and impact of the disease is a little bit larger than we thought,” claims Dr. Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and she is also the lead author on the study. It’s the first large-scale evaluation of the illness in the United States in over 15 years.
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While the total number of people infected with the disease has gone down over time, the number of people becoming seriously ill has increased.
Symptoms of cat scratch fever typically involve fatigue, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. However, in a small number of cases, cat-scratch disease can cause the brain to swell or infect the heart. Infections like those can be fatal if they aren’t properly treated.
“Most of the people who get seriously sick from cat-scratch are immunocompromised. The classic example is patients with HIV,” claims Dr. Aaron Glatt, chairman of medicine and hospital epidemiology of South Nassau Community Hospital in New York. Glatt was not involved in the study
The fact that there are more people with suppressed immune systems today might just be why a larger number of patients are getting dangerously ill, Glatt says. However, Nelson thinks that severe cases of cat-scratch disease may have been misdiagnosed in the past. One way or the other, she says, this study, which was published Wednesday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, is a good first step.
“Cat-scratch is preventable,” Nelson claims. “If we can identify the populations at risk and the patterns of disease, we can focus the prevention efforts.”
It’s preventable, they say, because you need direct contact with a cat to get it.
The disease is said to be caused by bacteria, usually Bartonella henselae, and passed between cats by fleas.
It is also said that the bacteria are also very present in flea dirt — the official name for flea feces — which build up in the cats’ fur. It gets on their paws and into their mouths when they groom themselves. If a person is scratched by contaminated claws, they’re at risk of getting the disease.
The study combed health insurance claims from 2005 all the way to 2013, and charted when and where cat-scratch disease is most likely to strike.
The study found that about 12,000 people will be diagnosed with cat-scratch disease each year, and 500 of them will be sick enough to be hospitalized.
Many of those people infected will be children, probably because of the ways kids play with cats.
It is also said that most of the infections will occur in the South, where heat-and-moisture-loving fleas are more common.
If you want to avoid cat-scratch disease altogether, claims Nelson, go somewhere arid —like Colorado or Utah.
However, moving to the Rockies isn’t an option for everyone. If you’re stuck in the South, how can you skip cat-scratch?
“Stay away from cats,” encourages Glass, although he acknowledges that in a country full of cat-lovers, this isn’t really realistic.
“Use adequate flea control and keep your cats indoors,” added Nelson. The bacteria may also enter your body through your nose, eyes or mouth, so the CDC recommends washing your hands after touching a cat. Kissing their flea dirt-filled fur probably isn’t a very good idea, either. Neither is letting them lick you if and when you have any scrapes, scabs or open wounds.
Oh, they also say - avoid kittens.
“Younger cats are more likely to have bacteria in their blood,” claims Nelson. Kittens aren’t immune to cat-scratch, so they’re an easy target for the bacteria.
What they are saying, in a nutshell, is - try to keep from kissing Felix … at least until he’s flea-free.
To all of this, we cat lovers say. “OK! THANKS! BUH BYE NOW”!