Posted on 01/06/2005 5:58:19 PM PST by pickemuphere
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pet hamsters are a potential source of serious infection, U.S. health officials warned on Thursday.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) (CDC) describe the case of a 3-year-old boy from Colorado who came down with tularemia after being bitten by a pet hamster.
Tularemia is caused by the bug Francisella tularensis, which is one of the most infectious germs known and for that reason is considered a potential biologic terrorism agent.
As outlined in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the boy's family purchased six hamsters from a pet store in the Denver metropolitan area. Within a week, all of the hamsters died of diarrhea, but not before one of them bit the child on the finger.
Seven days after the bite, the child developed fever, malaise, painful swelling of lymph nodes in his left armpit, "and skin sloughing at the bite site."
Treatment with the antibiotic amoxicillin-clavulanate failed to clear up the condition, and lymph node biopsy was performed. This revealed the cause to be Francisella tularensis.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
See also: Another Hamster Death
Why somoene would want a rat for a pet is odd to me.
Wonder who was the first person to think of doing that.
Considering some of the weird things I've seen in archaeology, probably someone dead and buried.
LOL sometimes google can be a bad thing!
you're probably right hehe.
I went to school with this guy. Very strange dude. Had long front teeth and always had a cuddle-bone with him.
FMCDH(BITS)
Not quite clear in the story if the kid ended up ok or not..
I hate poor writing like that.
I've been bitten by a hamster....dogs, a cat, and plenty of bugs too. But nothin' hurt worse than be chomped on by a donkey. (That's because they don't bite, they grind.) Good thing my mom didn't know about this kind of bio-threat....she would have never let me bring that rodent into the house.
You had a pet donkey?
Something to think about next time I'm on I-99 going through Tulare County.
There will be a bunch of toothless hamsters running around in that area.An even better and more humane idea would be to create little muzzles that fit the hamsters.I bet that would be right up their alley.
LOL!
They performed a biopsy on the lymph nodes, does that mean we assume death?
I'm sure who I wonder about more... the first one to try it... or the second. Somewhere, somebody saw that and thought "hey, that looks like fun..."
But there's a first time for everything. Who ate the first egg? Smoked some tobacco? Gotta wonder what they were thinking.
It's almost like wondering who sat down and thought about partial birth abortion *lol*
who sat down and thought about partial birth abortion ?
A LAWYER - who else could?
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