Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is a podcast about One Health the idea that the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment that we all share are intrinsically linked.
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Coming to you from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston National Laboratory.
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This is Infectious Science.
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Where enthusiasm for science?
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is contagious.
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All right.
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Hello everyone, Welcome to this new episode of Infectious Science.
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We're super excited to be here.
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How are you doing?
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Good, good Thanks.
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How are you?
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Living the dream, afraid I'll wake up.
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Yeah.
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How are the experiments going in the lab?
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Good, yeah, yeah.
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What's new for you?
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Yeah, guess what.
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I just decided to buy a new pet from my office.
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Oh, what'd you get?
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You guys know that I collect tarantulas.
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Right, I obviously have my cat at home and dog and so on, but I'm also into collecting tarantulas.
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So the other day I was at a very large national pet store I'm not going to say the name here.
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No free advertising on Infectious Bites.
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And I wanted to get a tarantula but I saw they had a chameleon, so I got a chameleon and always wanted to have a chameleon, and it's now in the tank in my office.
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So just your average Wednesday going out buying a chameleon.
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Average Wednesday for a bit.
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To be fair, I had the tank, I had the plants growing in the tank, and so on, so it was always on my mind to get one of those.
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Prepared A prepared impulse buy.
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Yes, those prepared a prepared impulse buy.
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Is that what you're?
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saying.
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Is that an oxymoron?
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I I don't know.
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Yes, okay.
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So I actually was reminded of the podcast, believe it or not, when I bought the chameleon, because they make you sign the, the contracts, and when you buy an animal button.
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They also give you this little pamphlet that's entitled understanding zoonotic diseases, and I think I don't know if that's a new thing or not, but I think I was interested in that and it gives you an overview of zoonotic diseases.
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For the listeners that don't know what a zoonotic disease is, it means a disease that can be transmitted or go from an animal to a human or from a human back to an animal, and the pamphlet talks about that and it gives you some recommendations on proper hygiene and what you should teach your children and so on, what you should do with your pets, vaccinations and so on.
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I thought it was very neat.
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I don't know if that's a new thing.
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Like you, guys have pets.
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Yeah, I've only ever had cats, dogs, the occasional goldfish.
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I know Camille has some pretty crazy pet stories.
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Growing up on a farm Camille care to share one.
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Yeah, as Christina mentioned, I grew up on a livestock farm and at one point I had a lamb so a baby sheep, for anyone who's listening and he was rejected by his mother so I had to bottle feed him and it was the middle of winter that was when he was born, so it was like January in New York, so it's super, super cold.
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So I actually brought him in the house and he lived in our downstairs house and he was actually house, trained him.
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He followed our dogs around.
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When our dogs went outside, he went outside with them.
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He'd come when you called him.
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He would try to eat dog food and how dogs circle before they lay down.
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He picked up on that behavior and he would do it and he would lay at your feet.
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So he would lay at my feet while I was doing my homework.
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So that was sweet.
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But the best thing about this lamb was that he wouldn't come when my brother called him.
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It was only when I did it.
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So even though my brother would try to like mimic my voice by doing like a falsetto and just being like come here, like this lamb, like totally ignored him, like completely knew it wasn't me, would just like absolutely continue on grazing out in our front yard like just absolutely left him alone.
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So he was in the house for like I think, three or four months until it was warm enough for him to like actually go outside.
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But he was totally.
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He was basically like a dog.
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I've heard of indoor outdoor cats, indoor outdoor dogs.
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Never heard of indoor outdoor lambs.
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You see more farm friends.
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That's true, yeah.
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What happened to the lamb ultimately?
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He was really good.
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I loved him.
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He was just like he was so well-trained, but he actually.
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For many years I used him as my show sheep, oh cool.
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And so he was what other young people who wanted to learn on how to handle larger animals.
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Sheep aren't huge, but if you're like, I don't know, six or seven, they seem pretty big.
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They're like the same height as you.
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He was so docile, so they he actually learned a lot of people learned how to work with animals with him and also how to groom them properly, because that's the thing you do, only for showing, really, or like how to shear.
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I made the yarn from his wool I like spun it on like a hand loom and everything.
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It was a whole thing but yeah, but he eventually passed.
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Growing up in San Antonio, south Texas, we do have high schools that are thoroughly involved in livestock and stuff like that, but I'd always heard of them using goats, so it's really cool that probably in texas you do use goats because it's probably too hot down here.
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That makes sense, I didn't think about that, yeah but you there's, yeah, a lot of goat species are like more evolved to live in this, but if you, even if you, like, sheared sheep down here, I wouldn't keep them like it's like 91 outside right now, but it's humidity, I think.
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But they do so well in the northern states because it's so cold, but they're really fun.
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Did I ever tell you guys that I was an instructor for a baby goat yoga for two years?
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No, no, this is untold stories from your past.
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I didn't even know you did yoga.
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I'm not the yoga type.
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No, that was a joke, but I know it's a thing that people do.
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I've seen it.
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I want to do it.
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I've also seen like alpaca yoga.
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Yeah.
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I feel like the people who want to do that are the people who've never had to like chase down goats, because they've gotten out of their enclosures, goats are escape artists, serious escape artists Goats are pretty wild, I'm not going to lie.
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So.
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So, since this is a podcast on infectious diseases, what infectious diseases do you think you could have gotten from that lamb, and how?
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Yeah, there's not a ton I'd worry about with sheep If you were taking them to move them across state lines or anything.
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You have to test them for scrapies, but that's not, as far as I know, communicable to humans.
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Not a ton that I would worry about with sheep at least sheep if you're not transporting them internationally.
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I'm sure there are Actually I know there are and you can probably talk more about this but there's certain diseases that can be carried by small ruminants that we do worry about, but they're not in the United States as much.
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Yeah, If I was working with pigs or cows or something like that, I could definitely give you a list, but from lambs, nothing I super worry about Not too many that come to mind.
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right, I can think of lauping ill, which is the flavivirus, but it's only found in the UK or parts of Europe.
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Yeah, it's not here, I can think of an infection that is particularly pertinent to amphibians and reptiles, though, dennis, and considering you have a chameleon, I can imagine you would be slightly concerned.
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Yes, and I also have a tortoise.
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You have a tortoise?
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as well.
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There you go, yeah, what kind of tortoise.
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A.
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Greek tortoise.
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I don't know what that looks like.
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I don't know what that looks like, how big is your tortoise.
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Maybe yeah, they can't see that Maybe like two.
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I don't know.
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What is that?
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Maybe a sign of a man, A sign of Victor Wimbanyama's hand.
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Yes, yes, for all my basketball fans.
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But yeah, the bacteria that comes to mind is salmonella, and I'm pretty sure a lot of our listeners have heard of, if not encountered, salmonella in their own lives.
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Wait a minute.
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Salmonella is something that I associate with eggs or chicken, cooked chicken, so that's why we wash the cutting boards where we cut our chicken quickly afterwards, because that's the place.
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So reptilians and salmonella.
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Yeah, so reptiles and amphibians actually have salmonella naturally on their skin and then also in their digestive tract.
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So whoever's actually handling the reptiles, the amphibians?
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If you're cleaning their environment, if you're picking up their waste, you can actually find salmonella in their feces, in their environment.
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So wash your hands after you cuddle your chameleon Absolutely my chameleon doesn't want to be cuddled.
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That's fair when.
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I reach in there, so all reptiles have salmonella or is this just a precautionary measure or two?
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I think it's just a precautionary measure in general that they could.
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I did not look up.
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It's like the same thing with eggs.
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I feel like you should always cook your eggs to a safe temperature, because they could have salmonella.
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If you're handling reptiles, whether it's a chameleon or a snake or something, it could have salmonella.
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Whenever I've handled snakes because I love snakes, I think they're really cool I'm always sure to, like, I don't know, wash my hands, Don't touch your face, especially little kids is more what you would worry about with being like touching it and then touching their mouth, or their hands and then touching their mouth.
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So are you saying, Camille, that I should cook my reptile to a safe temperature?
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I do not recommend coming with your reptile.
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I feel like for some reason I don't think chameleons are actually endangered, but the idea of that is horrifying to me.
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That was obviously a joke.
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Don't, don't.
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It's going to taste like chicken, isn't that what people say?
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No, honestly I didn't realize it, but apparently there's an estimated like one, almost one and a half million cases of salmonella that are reported annually.
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Yeah, and it is still the leading cause of death for foodborne illnesses.
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So it really is something that's super pertinent in our civilization today, in our society.
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And symptoms like we know diarrhea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain.
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So if you've been handling a reptile and you start feeling that go get yourself checked out, okay, a reptile dentist and you start feeling that go get yourself checked out, okay.
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I will say typically the more serious infections tend to really take place in patients with immunocompromised states or immunosuppression.
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But if you do start feeling any symptoms or anything like that, go to the doctor because overall you can get it treated with some antibiotics, fluids because overall you can get it treated with some antibiotics fluids.
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So, christina, you're saying it's in the GI tract, so it's probably mostly in the feces of the animals, right?
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Yeah, so it's on the skin, and then you'll also find it on the feces.
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Oh okay, okay I think it's interesting.
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I'm looking at this pamphlet you got and it's interesting that they don't mention that immunocompromised people are more likely to be at risk.
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I would expect that to be in there because, particularly like they have a whole section on like when children are handling pets, because like they're more at risk group, not because they're more likely to get sick, but because they're more likely to like, handle them and then touch their face or their eyes or something.
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So it's curious because that's something that for a lot of infections anyone who's?
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immunocompromised is more likely to get them from a pet?
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Absolutely, and that's actually something that we look for clinically when we're going to diagnose an immunocompromised patient.
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These infections that normally wouldn't surface in people with sufficient immune systems they start surfacing and once you see one, two, three of these infections, a light goes off and you start to test for immunocompromisation.
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Yeah, and that's I know.
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I'm someone, I have two cats and that's something I know when people talk about like toxoplasma or something like that.
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It's considered a torch disease, which are like a handful of diseases that basically can cause really detrimental effects to the newborn, and so toxoplasma itself causes this classic triad of symptoms that we see.
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So you have retinocoroiditis, which is an inflammation of the retina and of the choroid, and it can lead to just like really threatened vision.
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Hydroslephilus, which is an increased, basically cranial pressure due to an increase of fluid in the baby's head, and that can lead to a whole bunch of things like really severe headaches, obviously convulsions, so seizures, and then intracerebral calcifications as well, which can lead to a bunch of different things like cognitive impairment, psychiatric disabilities, things like that in the baby, and it can be pretty severe.
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And so when you say Christina, torch disease, you obviously don't mean the British English version of a flashlight.
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So what does TORCH stand for?
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Yeah.
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So TORCH stands for, the T is for toxoplasma, o is for other, which stands for syphilis, parvovirus, hiv, the R is rubella, the C is cytomegalovirus and the H is herpes simplex virus.
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So when a patient is pregnant, oftentimes they will preemptively be tested for these infections, just to protect the fetus itself, that's interesting.
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I didn't know about cytomegalovirus.
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That's really common.
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We isolate PBMCs in our lab so those are a specific type of cell that we're isolating from the blood so we can grow a virus in the lab and propagate it and cytomegalovirus, so we just call it CMV.
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And a lot of the blood that clinics get is CMV positive because people have had cytomegalovirus at some point and so, like you have to specifically ask and then it's rare to get that, you get CMV negative blood.
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So that's interesting.
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I didn't know it was a torch infection, but it's really common, yeah, yeah absolutely.
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Wow, I didn't know that.
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That's crazy to me, yeah.
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If you listeners out there, if you're interested to learn more about toxoplasmosis, which is a fascinating disease it's not fascinating as a disease, but the transmission cycle and all that stuff Please go back to our episode that we did in season one, where we talk about how toxoplasma can control the behavior of mammalian species.
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Super, super interesting, fascinating story Cats.
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Is there anything else that we have to be concerned about?
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Which cats can?
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transmit Cats themselves.
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They can transmit a whole lot.
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Just talking about toxoplasma real quick, Because she's a dog person.
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I am a dog person, but I do appreciate cats.
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I respect them is the way that I say it.
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That's how cats want to be treated.
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Yes, exactly, so we get along okay.
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We vibe.
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But I will say that toxoplasma, aside from just being transmitted by cats in the feces right, you can also get it from eating undercooked meat too.
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But yeah, going back to things that cats can transmit to us, I think we've all potentially heard of cat scratch fever.
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It's a great song and the fever is actually due to Bartonella, which is also a bacterium, specifically Bartonella henselae, and so basically the way that cats get this in their nails is that the fleas that are on cats infected cats are the source of the Bartonella and cats are scratching themselves from the fleas, so they basically get the bacterium on their claws and then, if you get scratched by an infected cat, you're basically introducing the bacteria into an open wound at that point.
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Keep your pets treated for fleas and ticks Exactly Like we want you to yeah exactly that's why it's so important.
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I think a lot of people don't realize that flea and tick prevention isn't just for sanitary reasons to keep fleas in your home.
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There's a purpose behind that.
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Fleas and ticks can transmit a whole lot, so can the fleas transmit it to us as well when they bite us?
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Yeah, okay, and body lice as well.
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Something interesting.
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So here in Galveston there's often cases of not often, but I believe it's almost every year we see cases of typhus, and how that actually is occurring is because we have cat fleas here Murine typhus.
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Murine typhus yes.
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Yes, thank you for that, these cat fleas.
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So we have possums in Galveston and a lot of them a researcher told me, basically are carrying this, and so cat fleas get on these possums and then they can also go on to stray cats or like feral cats or if people aren't keeping up on flea and tick care, maybe even their cats if they're like indoor, outdoor, and then people can end up getting murine typhus.
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So it's something that we see in Galveston.
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That's pretty crazy.
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Practicing medicine in Galveston is such a cool thing because it is a port city and you see so many different things in port cities that you normally wouldn't see in landlocked places, so that's selfishly a very cool place to practice, and this is actually a reminder that we always wanted to do an episode with Lucas Blanton here at UTMB, who's an expert in this, and we need to have him come on the show and talk about that because it's such an interesting story.
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So I guess the lesson learned is don't have pet possums.
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Is that correct?
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Or make sure they're treated for fleece and tape.
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They're only indoor possums.
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Indoor.
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Only they're indoor only possums.
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I feel like they'd be so mad.
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I see possums here when I'm out running and they are two feet long and I'm like, wow, you are a large creature.
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Yes, and then just to clarify by regulation you're not allowed to have possums as pets, so we're not endorsing you.
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Having pet possums, so we're not endorsing you having pet possums.
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No, this is illegal, so don't do it, okay.
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I will say, though it's important to just throw out there so that people aren't scared If you are infected and you do catch the infection early, you go and you seek medical treatment.
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A lot of these infections toxoplasma, bartonella they're treated with a course of antibiotics.
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So don't be afraid.
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Just be aware of your surroundings and of what you're doing and do your best to try to prevent these things.
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Yeah.
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So speaking of this, possums got me thinking so when I was in college I worked with a raptor education program.
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I went to Cornell University.
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They have a big vet school, Christine's making a velociraptor hands at me.
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And so they have this huge vet school and they have wildlife clinic and often they have birds that come in, so wild birds, but they're unable to be released because they have like wing damage or something like that Interesting.
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And it was interesting because, as they were originally wild animals, it was something we always thought about, that we were a little more aware of what it looks like to be handling these birds and just being more mindful of it, not just behavior wise, but also from an infectious disease standpoint and I know a really good friend of mine has a parrot that she adopted and I was talking with her about that.
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There's actually a pretty interesting infection that birds can carry that we just want to be aware of.
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Yeah, and I think what you're talking about is psittacosis.
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Am I correct?
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Yeah, and that's caused by chlamydia psittacitis, something like that.
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It's a chlamydia strain, yeah, but it's often found in parrots, specifically.
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And what kind of bird does your friend have?
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Is it a parrot?
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Yes, yeah, yeah, so definitely want to be a little bit more careful about that.
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Typically it's a pretty mild infection, if it's symptomatic at all in a patient.
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So the patient will have dry cough, fever, chills, headaches, muscle aches.
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But, like we've previously stated, in immunocompromised patients or immunosuppressed patients, so patients that are on steroids for some reason, like prednisone, or patients that are undergoing cancer treatment, so chemotherapy, some of these infections can definitely manifest to bigger things.
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Yeah, yeah, for sure, Christina.
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Can you also clarify again is it just, is it in the cage, or is it on the bird, or is it in the feces, or and is it consistently there?
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And tell me a little bit about if you have birds.
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What's the risk really of being exposed?
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When I first heard of this and I hope I'm getting this right I gathered the idea that it's specifically found in the GI tract of the birds, but it replicates in the respiratory system, if I'm correct.
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So you can get this infection through same thing as toxoplasma right, picking up feces like salmonella too but also through respiratory secretions from birds, so mucus from infected birds, dry saliva from infected birds, so that can all be in the bird's environment essentially.
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So if you're cleaning out this bird's cage or something like that, you can in the end get the infection by interacting with them.
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Yeah.
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So normally we recommend washing your hands right as a measure.
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Normally we recommend washing your hands right as a measure.
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But what you're saying is, if you clean the cage and there's a lot of dust and particles that you produce, you could inhale that and you could get the infection that way too correct.
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Yes, from what I could understand, and so that's why especially if also with other infections too if you want to be extra careful, just go ahead and wear some proper PPE when you're cleaning things.
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What is PPE, so personal protective equipment.
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If you want to get yourself just some gloves and maybe a mask so you're not inhaling this dust or these things in the air and so that you're also not exposing your skin or your hands to the actual bacterium or pathogens, that also might help just keeping you a little bit extra safe.
