ELY: A dog with the plague spread the disease to his owner in the first reported case of dog-to-human transmission.
Four Colorado residents were infected with the plague and they got it from a dog, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2014, a 2-year-old American pit bull terrier fell ill with a fever and symptoms like rigidity of the jaw and drooling. The sickness progressed so rapidly that the dog was euthanized the next day at a local veterinarian’s office.
The dog’s owner presented at the hospital four days later with a fever and a bloody cough. The first blood culture test was misidentified and had to be redone, according to the CDC. When the results of the second test came back, it resulted positive for Y. pestis, also known as pneumonic plague. When the dog’s remains were tested, Y. pestis was found.
“Frankly one of the biggest surprises of this outbreak is the source,” said study author John Douglas, of Tri-County Health Department in Colorado, according to ABC News. “Primarily … dogs don’t get sick at all or they get a minor illness,” after being infected.
Lead study author Janine Runfola, also of the Tri-County Health Department, told ABC News that cats are more likely than dogs to infect humans. Cats tend to develop more plague symptoms than canine companions. “For pneumonic plague a more likely scenario would be you have a cat [play] with prairie dogs and infected fleas get on the cat,” Runfola told ABC News. “The cat gets sick and sneezes and coughs on its owner.”
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