Replies

Some of the diseases rats and mice carry or cause include:

1. Rickettsial pox a disease similar to chicken pox and is spread to people by mites that are usually found on mice.

2. Rat bite fever is spread to people when they are bitten by an infected mouse, rat or rodent.

3. Food poisoning (namely salmonellosis) is spread to people when food, food preparation surfaces or dishes are contaminated by saliva, urine or feces from a mouse.

4. Mice and rats can spread parasites to people such as trichinosis and tapeworms.

5. Hantavirus is a respiratory disease that is carried by small rodents, especially deer mice. It is spread to people when they breathe in dust that contains the rodents infected saliva, urine or feces. Although uncommon, people can also get hantavirus if they are bitten by an infected mouse.

And this from a website about flea-borne disease:

Plague is spread to people when they come in contact with fleas from infected rodents or when people are bitten by infected rodents. However, today plague is usually spread to people by rodents like prairie dogs and squirrels.

Plague

Otherwise known as The Black Death, this disease is one of the oldest known and is found world-wide including the USA. In the fourteenth century it spread across Europe and was responsible for wiping out one third of the population.

The causative organism is a bacterium (Yersinia Pestis) and it is primarily a disease of rodents especially rats. The infection is spread to humans by the bite of the rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis).

Fleas become infected by feeding on the blood of an infected rodent. When the rodents die the fleas go in search of a new host. They can then transmit the disease to humans who become their hosts.

The disease manifests itself in two forms; bubonic plague and pneumonic plague:-

The symptoms of bubonic plague appear suddenly about seven days after exposure and include high fever, headache,muscular aches,shaking chills and pain in the groin and armpits due to the formation of buboes or swollen lymph nodes.

Untreated, the disease can spread rapidly throughout the body via the lymphatic system. When the lungs become infected an infectious pneumonia may develop.

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