Bacteria from cat fleas: 1st Australian case

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJan 3 2011

Australia’s fist case of a human infected with bacteria from cat fleas has been reported by a Newcastle doctor who says the disease may be more common than the GPs thought. The case study appeared in the Medical Journal of Australia that documents a Victorian family infected with Rickettsia felis after exposure to a kitten infested with fleas. Murdoch University scientists confirmed the presence of R. felis in cat fleas on cats and dogs in WA for the first time in 2006.

According to Director of Microbiology at John Hunter hospital Doctor Stephen Graves, three children and one adult were hospitalized with fever and a rash. A nine-year-old girl became seriously ill in Melbourne and her younger sister and brother, grandmother and neighbour had to be taken to hospital after they were bitten by fleas carrying the R. felis bacteria from kittens the family brought into their home. He added, “It’s likely to be present all over Australia, I suspect. It’s just that people haven’t looked for it… This little girl was really quite sick and in intensive care. She may have died if she had not got the right antibiotics ultimately.”

Dr. Graves hopes to raise the awareness regarding this disease among GPs. He said, “There’s an educational purpose behind it and that is, to let people know that this is a disease that’s here… If you have a patient that has fever and a rash, and they have been associated with cat fleas, or even dog fleas, then this may be the type of illness it is… And there is significance to that, because they can be treated with antibiotics.” Dr. Graves explained that there are numerous different types of rickettsia disease, which is a type of bacteria that is found in parasites such as fleas and ticks. Murine typhus, a rickettsia infection from rat fleas, was particularly common in WA he added. R. felis is the strain of rickettsia that is found in cat fleas and is common in North America, Europe and Asia. He said, “This disease hasn’t been recognised in Australia before… It’s almost certainly been here but it hasn’t been recognised because we didn’t have the correct diagnostic test to determine that it was this type of infection.”