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Monkeypox worries CDC
Atlanta Journal Constitution ^
| June 9, 2003
| DAVID WAHLBERG
Posted on 06/10/2003 12:16:34 AM PDT by FairOpinion
Health officials are concerned that monkeypox, a little-known disease from African rain forests that has infected some Midwesterners could wreak havoc now that it has entered new territory.
"Whenever you hear about a new virus being introduced into an ecosystem where it's not been present before, you have to be very, very concerned about the public health threat," Dr. Stephen Ostroff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
Authorities in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana are investigating at least 33 possible cases of monkeypox among people who have come into contact with prairie dogs. The patients are recovering, with six remaining in the hospital, said Ostroff, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases. Four cases have been confirmed, marking the first outbreak of the smallpox-like virus in the Western Hemisphere.
The virus apparently was transmitted from a Gambian giant rat to prairie dogs when the species were housed together by an exotic pet dealer near Chicago.
Both types of animals are sold as pets in the United States.
No human-to-human spread
It appears the virus hasn't spread between people, but the CDC in Atlanta hasn't ruled that out.
At least one rabbit has contracted the disease, leading health officials to worry that it could be transmitted to other animals, potentially expanding the risk to humans. "Even if we do manage to bring the prairie dog problem under control . . . [there is] the opportunity for potential cases from other sources," Ostroff said.
The behavior of a disease once it infiltrates a new country or species is nearly impossible to predict.
Mosquito-borne West Nile virus appeared in New York in 1999 and had spread throughout most of the country by last summer, infecting more than 4,100 people and killing 284.
SARS -- the new respiratory disease that has infected more than 8,400 people and killed 784 worldwide -- came from civet cats sold as exotic meat in southern China, according to a respected theory.
Most of the scant information on monkeypox is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has had periodic outbreaks, including one in 1996-97.
Smallpox vaccine helps
A study of 338 cases from the 1980s in Congo found a fatality rate of 9.8 percent for people who hadn't received the smallpox vaccine. About 9.3 percent of cases were spread between family members, though further transmission was rare.
Smallpox vaccine was 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox. U.S. health authorities are talking about recommending the vaccine for people who may have been exposed to ill prairie dogs.
Better nutrition and medical care in the United States could make the virus less lethal here, health officials said. But the lack of immunity in humans and animals that results from prior exposure also could make the situation worse.
"Experience in one location doesn't necessarily indicate what might happen when a pathogen like this is introduced into a new location," Ostroff said.
Like smallpox, monkeypox causes fever, pain, chills and sweating, usually followed one to 10 days later by a rash leading to blisters that scab over.
Of the 33 possible cases, 18 are in Wisconsin, 10 are in Indiana, and five are in Illinois. The patients range in age from four to 48 years old.
Some cases involve workers at veterinary clinics or pet shops, but most had contact with prairie dogs at home.
State health officials have instructed prairie dog owners not to release the animals into the wild, which could allow the virus to spread uncontrollably.
The first human monkeypox cases appeared in early- to mid-May but weren't reported to the CDC until Wednesday. The agency dispatched a team to collect specimens. After the team returned Friday and tests found monkeypox on Saturday, the CDC held a news conference to announce the finding.
Given the similarities to smallpox and a heightened concern about bioterrorism, some people questioned whether federal authorities should have been alerted earlier.
"We, too, are very interested in looking into the specific details of when information may have been available," Ostroff said. "I think it's a little bit premature to raise the alarm that maybe there were some missed opportunities here."
TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: monkeypox; palehorse; prairiedogs; virus
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I think the mortality figures are disturbing:
"A study of 338 cases from the 1980s in Congo found a fatality rate of 9.8 percent for people who hadn't received the smallpox vaccine."
Also this article says no human to human contact, but in the Congo outbreak in 1996-97, 73% of the infections were secondary, from human to human transmission.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00048673.htm
To: FairOpinion
Aww.... so much for owning your own prairie dog.
2
posted on
06/10/2003 12:18:45 AM PDT
by
goldstategop
(In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
To: goldstategop
A number of my husband's family live in this area of north-central Wisconsin, including a sister and brother-in-law who lived in Dorchester (which is a very small town).
Even though they're quarantined, the media is beating a path to their door.
Last Updated: June 10, 2003
Dorchester - Schyan had a fever. Nothing too serious for a 3-year-old, thought her mother, Tammy Kautzer. But better to be safe, so she took the girl to the Abbotsford clinic a few miles away.
At the end of a routine examination, Kautzer mentioned offhandedly that the little girl had been nipped on the right index finger a few days before by a cranky prairie dog purchased at a 4-H pet swap in Wausau. "It didn't seem like a big deal," said Kautzer, a warehouse worker in a nearby Tombstone Pizza plant.
Weeks later, things have become a big deal.
The Kautzers are quarantined in their farmhouse, epidemiologists are scrambling around the Midwest and monkeypox, a viral disease related to smallpox, has grabbed the headlines.
Meanwhile, back at the little farm on Pine Road where the first confirmed case of the disease was reported, Tammy Kautzer, 28, and her husband of seven years, Steve, 38, are recovering with their only daughter from the rare illness, killing time until they are allowed to leave their home. That will be in a few days, when the scabs fall off.
On Monday, Tammy was sorting through a horse trailer filled with heirlooms. Steve was mowing the lawn. And Schyan (pronounced like Cheyenne) was swinging in her backyard amid the braying of a Noah's Ark-full of animals and the buzzing of media types who have swarmed over the Kautzers' 5-acre plot to learn more about the origins of the illness.
Big excitement for these parts, said Steve Kautzer, a laborer at the Northwest Hardwoods sawmill nearby, something to rival the Fourth of July. The doctors have told them to avoid human contact. They stocked up on the essentials, and a case of Miller Genuine Draft, before medical officials asked them to stay at home.
Schyan, with stark blue eyes and bolts of flowing red hair, squirmed on a pet carrier that housed Chuckles, a second prairie dog also ill from monkeypox. The Kautzers have decided to keep Chuckles because it is believed they are immune from contracting the disease again.
Schyan sucked her thumb and displayed the wound, a discolored lesion, from the first prairie dog that is thought to have infected her.
She had been handling the animal a few weeks ago when it was showing signs of being ill, its eyes crusted over. As she was putting the animal back in its cage, it bit her.
Schyan's wound was fine at first, but it soon grew and became discolored, her mother said.
The prairie dog had been found dead the day of the trip to the clinic, Tammy Kautzer said, so she was told by a worried doctor to retrieve it from the garbage. By that point, the possibility of rabies, or even bubonic plague, was on the table.
"They sent the head to Madison and the lymph nodes to St. Joseph's (Hospital in Marshfield)," Tammy Kautzer said.
Meanwhile, their daughter's condition worsened, and she was admitted to St. Joseph's. Soon afterward, both parents got lesions. Steve's tracked up his arms; some are still visible on the left one, framing a big tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil in Green Bay Packers garb throttling a Minnesota Viking.
They were told that they could have contracted the virus from kissing their daughter's boo-boo. Tammy Kautzer also may have gotten it from an open cat scratch on her hand.
During the explanation of the events, Schyan interrupted to provide an inventory of the menagerie kept at the home, off a ribbon of dirt road in dairy country, on the eastern edge of an Old Order Mennonite community.
"I got horses and donkeys and goats and puppies and cats," she said.
They got the prairie dogs from a vendor at a Mother's Day event in Wausau. In all, they have about 30 animals now. Tammy Kautzer sells some of the animals she raises and was doing so at the swap meet, she said.
She is the big pet lover. "I don't remember a time in my life when I didn't have a pet," she said.
Her husband seemed a bit ambivalent. "I won't say I hate animals," he said with an easy smile.
Tammy Kautzer said she had owned three prairie dogs about five years ago, about the time they bought the farm. They were friendly critters - one would roll over on his back and wait for his stomach to be scratched. So when she bought two for $95 apiece, she had no reason to suspect they would be ornery - or infected by another exotic animal, she said.
"I thought they were captive raised," she said. She later was told that they actually were captured somewhere in the Dakotas three weeks before.
"I didn't know that they had been sucked out of the ground," she said.
Where the animals came from is a matter of dispute.
At one point Monday, Tammy Kautzer was on the phone with the husband of the seller, who was angry that she had been identified in print by Kautzer and had threatened to sue. The husband was calling to smooth things over.
The Kautzers said they weren't worried about getting sick again. Neither are the agencies they've spoken with, they said.
Besides burning the bedding of the prairie dog that lived and minding their scabs as they fall off, all they can do is wait.
"They told us that it's the pox," Tammy Kautzer said, with a self-conscious laugh. "Once we have it, we're immune to it. I hope so. Because once you have it, it's a nasty little circle."
3
posted on
06/10/2003 4:40:19 AM PDT
by
Catspaw
To: Catspaw; FairOpinion; CathyRyan; Mother Abigail; Dog Gone; Petronski; per loin; riri; flutters; ...
no doubt he is still facing a lawsuit from our fine attorney friends and Mr. Thompson. Sounds like human-to-human spread.
To: All
Oops, highlighted the wrong text. Should have been:
They were told that they could have contracted the virus from kissing their daughter's boo-boo. Tammy Kautzer also may have gotten it from an open cat scratch on her hand.
To: All
To: All
To: vetvetdoug; All
S[eaking of vaccines, I wonder if there is a feasible way of conferring immunity on the vulnerable animal populations that might spread this disease.
To: FairOpinion; All
Is it known yet if exposure to the monkey pox virus results in resistance or immunity to small pox?
To: aristeides
Sounds like human-to-human spread. Does it weaken with successive generations?
When does it become contagious?
What other animals can serve as carriers?
Even if it does not weaken, it it is not contagious until symptoms appear then it should be much easier to contain than SARS because the symptoms are so obvious.
10
posted on
06/10/2003 8:17:06 AM PDT
by
EternalHope
(Boycott everything French forever.)
To: Freebird Forever
"Is it known yet if exposure to the monkey pox virus results in resistance or immunity to small pox?"
---
I don't know, it may be. But consider this: the mortality from smallpox vaccine is 1 in 1,000,000, while from monkey pox it's 10% (in unvaccinated population, the lower mortality was because some people in earlier outbreak were still had smallpox vaccine). So why take a risk of 1 in 10 dying, when they don't want to take the risk of 1 in a million dying.
To: aristeides
At least one rabbit infected.
This is not a good thang!!!
To: Free Trapper
To: aristeides
My concern is that we have family in the north central Wisconsin area, including my hubby's elderly parents (along with all the attendant health problems). But I also wonder how many other humans and animals were exposed to monkeypox, from the time the prairie dogs hit the pet store, passed through various hands and ended up at a swap meet in Wausau, Wisconsin and onto this little farm. Ditto for all the other prairie dogs the pet shop sold--how many people were exposed to this disease and can it be contained?
14
posted on
06/10/2003 9:12:36 AM PDT
by
Catspaw
To: Catspaw
Well, at least elderly people were presumably vaccinated against smallpox. Monkeypox is said to hit young children the worst.
To: aristeides
The family I have in the area range from my father-in-law at 75 to two nephews under 3--and all ages inbetween.
16
posted on
06/10/2003 9:40:07 AM PDT
by
Catspaw
To: aristeides; Judith Anne; Dog Gone; riri; blam; CathyRyan
What happens when some victim gets SARS-Monkeypox-Mad Cow Disease-West Nile Virus-New Lyme Disease all at the same time?
It could happen.
Perhaps that is the plan!
17
posted on
06/10/2003 9:43:31 AM PDT
by
Betty Jo
To: FairOpinion
"73% of the infections were secondary, from human to human transmission."
I'm guessing by mid summer there will be a massive smallpox innoculation.
18
posted on
06/10/2003 10:16:03 AM PDT
by
Domestic Church
(AMDG...rabbits...county fairs...kids)
To: goldstategop
They are pretty awesome pets and this outbreak is coming from one store.
19
posted on
06/10/2003 10:46:35 AM PDT
by
rwfromkansas
(Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel!)
To: rwfromkansas; All
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Prairie Dog Illness
It didn't seem like a big deal. 
Officials warn:
Video:
If people no longer want prairie dogs or other unusual pets, they should call veterinarians or animal shelters and ask to turn them in under safe health conditions.
www.cdc.gov