Worms & Germs Blog

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I’ve held off writing about this for a few reasons, a big one being a lack of clear information, but a lot of attention has been directed towards an apparent outbreak in cats on the island of Cyprus.

In general, when we have reports of strange disease events, there are a few scenarios to consider:

I’ve written (ranted?) about this before – namely the misuse of antimicrobials intended for treatment of aquarium fish in other species. Usually such posts are followed by a deluge of nasty emails along with a bunch of curious requests for links to fish antibiotic sellers (8% kickback available!).

Another sponsorship request came in this morning,

Things have been pretty quick regarding monkeypox in domestic animals lately. Whether that’s because human case numbers are dropping and human-animal infection is rare, or whether it’s because there’s not enough surveillance isn’t clear. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. Our surveillance has been really slow since it’s been hard to recruit participants,

At first glance, if you follow zoonotic diseases, you might look at the title of this post and think ‘what is he rehashing now? We know Salmonella is common in reptiles and contact with reptiles is a major risk factor for salmonellosis in people.”
In large part, you’d be right. Not a lot has changed