Animal 0 Posté(e) le 21 juillet 2006 A rare bacterial infection Prof Pennington said pneumonia is the hallmark of Q fever Eleven people working at a meat processing plant in Stirlingshire have contracted a rare condition known as Q fever. Here, leading microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington looks at the condition. What is Q fever? Q fever is a bacterial infection which shows itself usually by causing a severe pneumonia and it can be quite difficult to diagnose because the pneumonia itself is not that different from the pneumonia that's caused by more common agents. However, pneumonia is the hallmark of Q fever. It causes a fever, severe headache and can affect other organs as well. How serious is it? If it is treated with ordinary antibiotics there is not really a problem. Spotting the infection and getting the right treatment is the crucial thing here. There are a few people, who if they have heart valve problems, can get a chronic problem there as well. Like any infection, most people get better but others have a hard time. Can it be fatal? It can be fatal but in fit healthy people who are treated appropriately, it should not be. We have eleven cases at the moment. Is that a worrying number? It is a big number but it is not the first outbreak we have seen in this particular kind of circumstance. The first was in Australia in 1935, which was associated with a meat plant. How likely is it the infection could spread outside the plant? People living nearby should not be particularly worried. The organism can spread in the air but usually you need pretty close contact with an infected source. For example, the bedding on which a sick animal has been resting. If you breathe in the dry dust from that you can get infected. What happens now in terms of environmental health and surveillance around the plant? The first priority is to identify all the people who have been infected and get them appropriately treated and finding the source of the outbreak, to determine how many other people may have been exposed. Unfortunately the bug is reasonably common in animals and very often does not make the animal sick, so there is not much you can do at the animal end. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/5197646.stm Partager ce message Lien à poster Partager sur d’autres sites
