Do stray dogs raise risk for human infections of a skin burrowing flea in Kenya?
Are dogs associated with infections by a skin burrowing flea in Kenya? Masanobu Ono and I with Kensuke Goto, Satoshi Kaneko, mwatasa Changoma just published a paper on #tungiasis in the journal Tropical Medicine and Health.
Most people haven’t heard of tungiasis, an ectopic skin disease caused by the skin burrowing parasite, T. pentrans. It causes itching, pain, is associated with serious secondary bacterial infections, gangrene, social exclusion and debilitation. It primarily afflicts the very young and very old and is found almost exclusively in the poorest parts of the poorest parts of the world. It fits the classic definition of a neglected tropical disease.
We explored associations of wildlife and domesticated animals with household level tungiasis in Kenya using a two stage complex sampling based survey in an area adjacent to a wildlife preserve.
Abstract:
Introduction
Tungiasis is a ectopic skin disease caused by some species of fleas in the Tunga genus, most notably T. penetrans. The disease afflicts poor and marginalized communities in developing countries. Transmission of tungiasis comprises a complex web of factors including domesticated animals and wildlife. This research explores animal and environmental risk factors for tungiasis in an area adjacent to a wildlife reserve in Kwale, Kenya.
Methods
A two-stage complex sampling strategy was used. Households were selected from three areas in and around Kwale Town, Kenya, an area close to the Kenyan Coast. Households were listed as positive if at least one member had tungiasis. Each household was administered a questionnaire regarding tungiasis behaviors, domesticated animal assets, and wild animal species that frequent the peridomiciliary area. Associations of household tungiasis were tests with household and environmental variables using regression methods.
Results
The study included 319 households. Of these, 41 (12.85%) were found to have at least one person who had signs of tungiasis. There were 295 (92.48%) households that possessed at least one species of domesticated animal. It was reported that wildlife regularly come into the vicinity of the home 90.59% of households. Presence of dogs around the home (OR 3.85; 95% CI 1.84; 8.11) and proximity to the park were associated with increased risk for tungiasis infestation in humans in a multivariate regression model.
Conclusions
Human tungiasis is a complex disease associated with domesticated and wild animals. Canines in particular appear to be important determinants of household level risk.
#research#science#publichealth#medicine#health#environmental#ntds#neglectedtropicaldiseases#poverty#parasitology#globalhealth#healthdisparities
Pigs and jiggers: could wild swine be spreading the awful foot burrowing flea?
I wanted to go and see what this jigger thing was really about so I had my guys rent a car and we drove into Mtsangatamu town. Mtsangatamu (I still can’t pronounce it properly) lies along the edge of the Shimba Hills Wildlife Reserve and, according to my data, is a hot spot for tungiasis, or infections from the so called “jigger flea.”
It is a beautiful area. Filled with tropical trees and overgrowth, the landscape looks almost uncontrollable, despite the soil being so sandy that not a drop of water stands anywhere. The air is blistering hot.
People don’t get out here much, though the packed buses that pass by every few minutes indicate that the area isn’t entirely isolated. We drop off some gas for one of our drivers, who has to slowly fill his tank, drop by drop, with the tiniest of plastic funnels. Some development project should provide proper plastic funnels to these guys.
For some reason, we drive into the bush along a foot path, until we find ourselves wedged between a number of small pine trees. “We have to walk now,” I am told while I wonder why we drove this far anyway. Walking would have been easier.
We exit the car, walk through what a patch of neatly arranged trees. A tiny tree farm. I never see this in Western, ever. Coming out, we walk into a compound laid out in a manner wholly uncharacteristic of Kenya. A two story building sporting an upstairs patio complete with a winding staircase to the top, the place looked like the type of patchwork architecture that you associate with off-gridders in the US rather than Kenyan peasants.
“The Mighty Paraffee: If in need call XXXXXXXXXXX”
The Mighty Paraffee turns out to be a kid of about 24, chilling out in the shade. He built this place himself, installed power, has a guest room and an upstairs shower and toilet. His room is decorated with reggae stars and pictures of the saints. Indian music is blaring out of the building. I’ve seen creative interiors from reggae fans in Kenya, but this is something else. This kid should be in architectural school. He even made sure to place the building under a giant tree to keep it cool.
I never figure out what the family does for money and no one can tell me, but the mother is exceedingly proud.
No jiggers here. We walk on. After about a kilometer, we find a poor family sitting outside their house. Children aren’t in school and no one speaks any English indicating that none of them go.
Hassan (one or our workers) brings over a little girl and tells me to look at her feet. Fatuma is 10 years old and her feet are infested with jiggers. She says the don’t hurt much in the day, but they itch at night. Her brother apparently has them, too. Her mother and her aunt do not.
Everyone is barefoot and they all sleep in the same house. I’m wondering if there might be something about the skin which makes kids susceptible while adults are spared.
I notice a group of goats in a pen and start asking questions about animals.
Tungiasis is a zoonotic disease. It is passed from wildlife to domesticated animals to people who bring it into the household and infect their other family members. Or so it is though. Not many people have really explored the question sufficiently. Of course, this is why I’m here.
They have about 15 goats, a few chickens and I notice a young dog and a cat walking around. I ask if they ever notice whether the dog ever has jiggers. They say no.
“What kinds of wildlife do you see around here?” One of the kids was killed by an elephant last year. There are wild dogs and hyenas which come and try to get the goats. Wild pigs dig up the cassava at night.
Pigs. That has to be it. A big mystery has been why there is such a tight relationship between distance to the park and jiggers infections. Wild pigs come out of the forest, raid the fields of the locals and get water from the river, and then recede back into the darkness before morning. 5km is approximately the distance that a pig could feasibly travel and return home in one night.
Pigs travel through and around the compound, dropping eggs, they mature and are probably picked up by dogs, but are most likely picked up by kids walking in the bush. They then bring them back home and pass them on to their family members.
Hassan associates jiggers with mango flowers, but I probe him further and find that the flowers coincide with the very dry season, which could explain why pigs are making the trek to the river and why they prefer the fields since both water and food are probably scarce in the forest.
I have to send a student out to investigate this further.
An old man comes out. He looks nearly 90, but is mostly likely on 60 at most. He has arthritis in his back. He shows me his feet which are moderately infected, mostly only between the toes. He asks for medicine. I tell him I’ll send some along. He offers me some boiled cassava which I graciously take. My colleague refuses because there are no cashew nuts with it, but I suspect that he’s worried about getting sick. I become concerned.
We take some pictures and go.
On the way back, we run into an elderly lady. She’s sitting next to her husband, who is busy getting lit on homemade beer at 11 in the morning. She shows me her feet. The spaces around her feet are infested with jiggers. It must be horribly painful.
She points out that she doesn’t have a whole lot of feeling in her left foot. I notice that her skin in this area is clear; the bone is visible through her skin. I ask what happened. She says that she got bitten by a snake 40 years ago. She was pregnant. I ask her if the baby was ok. “The baby is standing there!”
I consider making a joke about a snake baby, but think better of it. I’m just amazed that both of them survived. The wound was horrible looking.
Somehow, we manage to pull ourselves out of the trees and move on. There are some baboons removing mites from one another on the road on the way back, and I take some pictures. My colleague is about to pass out from the heat. I offer to drive.
Links I liked, November 18, 2014
I liked so many things I read today that, rather than clutter social media, I’ll make note of them right here:
“Falling” by William McPherson – By far, the most depressing thing I have read in a while. McPherson is a Pulitzer winning writer and former editor at the Washington Post who chose a life of curiosity and is now paying the ultimate price. It’s awful that the brightest people have to be punished for thoroughly embracing life. So many people I know are going to go this way, it is possible that I might, too.
In India, Growth Breeds Waste NYT – Documenting India’s mounting problem of what to do with its waste. Europe went through their urbanization pains centuries ago. Unfortunately, developing countries are rising to the challenge fast enough. The problem, of course, is that elites are sheltered from the problems of waste and weak and corrupt government structures disallow people from demanding that their countries clean up. International environmentalists need to focus less on screaming about corporate polluting (though it is important) and need to start making demands for more boring things, like managing waste on a local level.
Stop calling me ‘the Ebola nurse’ – Kaci Hickox – This lady was a hero. She never had ebola, but was still illegally interned for having it because a few Americans don’t understand science. Anybody who supported her detainment should just stop speaking to me now. It was shocking how readily Americans were willing to lock people up simply because they were scared and even more shocking where the calls for her “arrest” came from. I give up. People like Hickox put their money where their mouths are. She did what most humans wouldn’t do and she was vilified for it. Unforgivable.
Ten Things that Anthropologists Can Do to Fight the West African Ebola Epidemic I think it should be required that every field research project include an anthropologist.
Q Fever Is Underestimated in the United States: A Comparison of Fatal Q Fever Cases from Two National Reporting Systems People are dying of Q, but much of it isn’t recorded.
Ebola: a poor example of disease transmission, but maybe that’s not an accident
I’m reading through news about the American rights hijacking of the Ebola crisis for their own political gain. Did this outbreak have to occur right before the midterms, and right before a Senate election? The awful toll it will take on West African states aside, the virus couldn’t have picked a worse time (or a better, depending on how you look at it).
Ebola is a scary virus, assuming that one ever has the misfortune to come into contact with it. “Contact” in this case, means that you have to have direct contact with the blood, feces or vomit of a person infected and symptomatic with Ebola. Unfortunately for the virus, people don’t really live that long once they become symptomatic with the disease and the people who survive appear to be immune to it
This is a terrible model for an infectious pathogen. The symptoms are so severe that all around the person will immediately run away (except health workers, who bear the brunt of the risk) and the host doesn’t live very long providing only a short window with which to infect other hosts.
So the duration of infectiousness is short, the pathways are really awful and repeat infections are unlikely.
To put this into perspective, looks at the most successful pathogens out there, pathogens like influenza. Influenza transmits easily, nearly two thirds of those infected show no symptoms and thus can happily shed viral particles to everyone they know undetected. When symptoms do occur, they aren’t so bad as to keep every outside of a 5 miles radius of you. Influenza mutates at an incredible rate, so that a single infection doesn’t provide much protection against later infections. Even better, though its rapid mutation rate sometimes leads to horribly virulent strains like the 1918 flu pandemic which killed millions, in most cases influenza spares a healthy host.
It has developed an incredibly efficient and effective survival strategy (and for this reason is far scarier than Ebola).
So I’ve been thinking of how a virus like Ebola might persist in the wild, given it’s odd mode of transmission.
Now, we know that Ebola is a zoonotic disease, that is, it is transmitted from animal to humans. Since humans have not developed genetic resistance to the disease, we are at particular risk for its worst effects. Many of the scariest diseases out there are zoonoses. Examples would include HIV, SARS and, of course, influenza. While not always true, we tend to make peace with pathogens that are old and exclusively human. Many of the bacteria which live happily in your gut would be examples. As we haven’t had sufficient time to make peace with Ebola or HIV, the outcomes can be far worse than those seen in their normal hosts.
Thus, it is possible that Ebola is far less serious in whatever host it is adapted for. Nipa virus, which has a case fatality rate (the percentage of all infections of a pathogen which result in death) of more than 90% does nothing to the fruit bats it happily resides in. It is possible that Ebola is also harmless to whatever host it depends on.
However, it is possible that Ebola might be harmless in some hosts, while deadly in others, and this difference might be the result of a successful evolutionary adaptation.
Ebola has been pegged as residing in bats possibly explaining its wide range over central Africa. [1-6] Bats are a pathogens dream. They multiply quickly, providing ample opportunities for transmission and for evolutionary adaptations to the pathogen which might insure its long term survival. Better yet, they fly so that pathogens can disperse themselves quickly over a large geographic space. This is particularly useful if the pathogens wants to maintain healthy genetic diversity (though the creation of multiple sub-populations) and if it can infect multiple hosts which may or may not be all that mobile.
Apes would be a good example of the latter. Apes, being fairly sensitive to environmental changes, don’t like to move around a whole lot (unlike humans which are highly adaptable to just about any environment on the planet) but still might be important to the survival of the pathogen.
Ebola has been found in apes and the disease is currently devastating local populations.[4, 7-10]
And this is where I get stuck. In nature, plenty of things happen for no reason at all, but with pathogens, even accidental occurrences can have implications for survival and are often part of the tool box with which diseases evolve and persist.
A bleeding ape on a forest floor will likely kill all of its relatives in quick fashion, assuming its family doesn’t just hightail it out in which case transmission is over anyway. But the dead ape might serve an important purpose. Predators and scavengers will quickly arrive to feast on the infected corpse, transmitting the virus to carnivorous animals all around the forest. This could provide ample opportunities for transmission to other species. Even though many of these species could be poor hosts for the disease, they could also represent new opportunities for survival.
HIV would be an example of this. From HIV’s standpoint (assuming a collective viral consciousness), the jump to humans was extremely fortuitous. Humans love to have sex with multiple people, often even after having already reproduced, and physiologically they proved resistant enough to allow the virus to hang out for a few years before dying, allowing for years of transmission possibilities.
Thus, while on the surface, blood based modes of transmission seem pretty useless, they could serve a larger purpose of insuring a pathogens survival on a macro-level. In the case of HIV, humans didn’t turn into a dead end host (as they are with diseases like Brucella) but rather a new opportunity for survival.
The deadly nature of the virus in apes and humans, then might be like an insurance policy. Like a retirement portfolio, a diversified package of stocks will keep you alive in retirement much better than a portfolio with a single stock. Work has been done on pathogens which infect multiple species, and, depending on the nature of the pathogen, species diversity can either work for or against the survival of the pathogen.[11-13]
In the case of Ebola, there is no real evidence that humans play a role in sustaining transmission, but blood and predation could be sustaining something like Brucella or Q Fever in the wild.
Now, in this article, I have rambled on and bored you to death (and bless you if you made it this far) but I have to point out that I am under no illusions that pathogens act consciously, though I have like many of my colleagues present it as such. Actually, no living thing really does have a long term plan outside of its narrow goals of producing offspring. But new opportunities for transmission do present new opportunities for the long term evolutionary survival or a biological entity. These lucky occurrences are not consciously sought out, but rather enable the pathogen to do what it does successfully.
It must be said that the ecology of Ebola is somewhat of a mystery. Not much work has been done on the subject, as the pathogen hides out in some of the most inaccessible areas of the planet, and conflict and political instability in places like the Central African Republic and Northern Uganda prevent researchers from doing extensive work on the pathogen.
1. Stan D: Ebola and Fruit Bats. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2006, 42(5):V.
2. Olival KJ, Islam A, Yu M, Anthony SJ, Epstein JH, Khan SA, Khan SU, Crameri G, Wang L-F, Lipkin WI et al: Ebola virus antibodies in fruit bats, bangladesh. Emerging infectious diseases 2013, 19(2):270.
3. Hayman DTS, Yu M, Crameri G, Wang L-F, Suu-Ire R, Wood JLN, Cunningham AA: Ebola virus antibodies in fruit bats, Ghana, West Africa. Emerging infectious diseases 2012, 18(7):1207.
4. Kumulungui B, Leroy EM, Swanepoel R, Gonzalez J-P, Pourrut X, Rouquet P, Yaba P, Paweska JT, Délicat A, Hassanin A: Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus. Nature 2005, 438(7068):575.
5. Vogel G: Infectious disease. Are bats spreading Ebola across sub-Saharan Africa? Science (New York, NY) 2014, 344(6180):140.
6. Hayman DTS, Emmerich P, Yu M, Wang L-F, Suu-Ire R, Fooks AR, Cunningham AA, Wood JLN: Long-term survival of an urban fruit bat seropositive for Ebola and Lagos bat viruses. PloS one 2010, 5(8):e11978.
7. Groseth A, Feldmann H, Strong JE: The ecology of Ebola virus. Trends in microbiology 2007, 15(9):408.
8. Vogel G: Ecology. Tracking Ebola’s deadly march among wild apes. Science (New York, NY) 2006, 314(5805):1522.
9. Leroy EM, Rouquet P, Formenty P, Souquière S, Kilbourne A, Froment J-M, Bermejo M, Smit S, Karesh W, Swanepoel R et al: Multiple Ebola Virus Transmission Events and Rapid Decline of Central African Wildlife. Science 2004, 303(5656):387.
10. Walsh PD, Biek R, Real LA: Wave-like spread of Ebola Zaire. PLoS biology 2005, 3(11):e371.
11. Renwick AR, White PCL, Bengis RG: Bovine tuberculosis in southern African wildlife: a multi-species host–pathogen system. Epidemiology and Infection 2007, 135(4):529.
12. Dobson A, Meagher M: The population dynamics of brucellosis in the Yellowstone National Park. Ecology 1996, 77(4):1026.
13. Dobson A: Population Dynamics of Pathogens with Multiple Host Species. The American Naturalist 2004, 164(S5):S64.
Sick animals in Gembe East
I went on a hunt for some sick animals… and finally found some! We were visiting some families in Gembe East, and area close to Mbita Point in Homa Bay County and found a man who had more than 50 goats and nearly 20 cows. In Maasai-land, that’s a tiny herd, but in Luo-land, its gigantic.
He had a sickly goat which had just aborted, vaginal discharge, was feverish, emaciated and had a hard coat. A friend suggested it might be Brucella, but without a test, we’ll never really know. Either way, I suggested that it might not be a terrible idea to make choma out of it (as he said he was going to do) and get it away from the pregnant lady in the house. He reported that there had been a couple of other abortions in his herd.
The cows in Luo-land don’t look very good. It’s possible that the scant rains recently are having an impact on the vegetation. Pink-eye is everywhere right now.
So much is made about potentially zoonotic diseases in giant pastoralist herds, but the issue goes mostly ignored around Lake Victoria. Though animal possession per household is low, there are more households living in more densely populated conditions, meaning that there are potentially more animals per square kilometer in Nyanza than in Northern Kenya.
A combination of high human and animal density, poverty and a shared water source could create perfect conditions for a zoonotic disease outbreak.
Financial woes fuel Brucella outbreak in Northern Cyprus
Brucellosis hotspot?
Less known is that Cyprus is actually two countries, one of which is Northern Cyprus, which is only recognized by Turkey. It’s safe to say, though, that Northern Cyprus’ financial health is deeply connected to that of Cyprus’.
Northern Cyprus apparently doesn’t have enough money in it’s budget to adequately monitor, test and deal with an rapidly spreading outbreak of Brucellosis among its livestock because of the Cypriot financial collapse.
Brucella is a nasty bacterial disease which I’ve written on before which includes outcomes such as fever, malaise, miscarriage, chronic arthritis and heart disease, depression, mania and death. It can infect all mammals and is highly transmissible; any contact with a bacterium will result in infection. Though only one case of human to human transmission has ever been recorded (sexual transmission), Brucella is well known as a public health threat to people who work with livestock.
Brucella is ranked among the most economically important zoonotic diseases globally, and presents threats to humans, animals and wildlife.
The chairman of the union of livestock producers, Mustafa Naimoglulari, confirmed that the brucellosis microbe has been discovered at 60 farms and criticized the authorities for not launching a fight against the disease.
He said that blood should have been taken from the animals for analysis in order to establish which of them are contaminated.
In statements to Kibris, the official responsible for agriculture in TRNC, Onder Sennaroglu said that they have taken money from UNOPS to deal with the issue, but they could not eliminate brucellosis.
He noted that he knows that money should not be an excuse, but the cost of this issue is very high. “I have to say that resources are needed, and we have no resources at the moment,” he admitted, adding that they have applied to the EU for money.
The Cypriot financial crisis has its roots in the US subprime mortgage crisis. In fact, the pattern of the precentage of debt to GDP of Cyprus follows that of the Eurozone, but rapidly increases after 2012, where the EU flattened out. Cyprus previously relied heavily on a tourism fueled real estate bubble in addition to revenues from tourism itself. As debt went bad in the US and the Eurozone, debt went bad in Cyprus. Having no other sectors to depend on, the Cypriot economy collapsed.
Now, we are seeing that the financial collapse and the loss of government revenues to support public health efforts and having deleterious effects on animal and, likely, human health.
A map of poor livestock owners
This map (from “Mapping of poverty and likely zoonoses hotspots”) is pretty eye-opening. Looking at this, I’m thinking that the next big disease event will most certainly come out of India.
Note that the most virulent of infectious diseases in humans are often associated with animals. India’s high density, close contact with animals and poor regulatory environment make for a frightening mix.
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