Zoonotic Infections News

The last few years have seen a growing force of infectious disease challenges that together pose an unprecedented range of threats to health here in the United States and in countries around the world where Americans travel and conduct business. While outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, SARS and MERS have spread from their places of origin with devastating impacts, rising rates of resistance to antimicrobial drugs threaten the gains of modern medicine at home and globally. New and re-emerging diseases with pandemic potential continue to surface, and diseases that include tuberculosis, once considered all but conquered, have evolved faster than the medicines to control them, to pose new dangers.

Sand flies and wild animals sustain a natural infection from visceral leishmaniasis, making household pet exposure near forested and protected areas concerning for owners, according to a study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Local transmission of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, or CCHF, has been documented in Spain for the first time, a finding that researchers said changes the geographic distribution of the frequently fatal infection.

State and federal investigators alerted health care providers in Alaska about two outbreaks of trichinellosis that were caused by the consumption of raw or undercooked walrus meat.

Sandboxes in playgrounds that are unprotected from dogs and other wild animals may harbor Clostridium difficile and expose children to the bacteria at epidemic levels, according to a study published in Zoonoses and Public Health.

Complications from infection acquired during unsubstantiated treatments for chronic Lyme disease — a condition that is diagnosed based on a variety of symptoms and often without laboratory evidence of Borrelia burgdorferi infection — have the potential to be severe and, in some cases, life-threatening.

The Trump administration has named Georgia health commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, to be the next CDC director.

Ecological changes in one of China’s largest freshwater lakes that were caused by the Three Gorges Dam project have led to a significant decrease the rate of schistosomiasis infections in the area around the lake, researchers said.

Prevalence rates of dengue may be higher than previously reported for children in Indonesia, with more than 80% of children aged 10 and older having experienced an infection at least once in their lives, according to a study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

WHO has declared an end to the Ebola outbreak in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.