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Cat Scratch Disease: Is Your Child At Risk?
By Roxanne Willems Snopek
Cats are now the number one pet in North America, and with good reason. Small, clean and hardy, they make wonderful household companions. Unfortunately, some cats carry an organism called Bartonella henselae, which can cause Cat Scratch Disease. CSD isn't common, but it affects mostly children. Usually the symptoms are mild, but for anyone with a weakened immune system, CSD can be extremely serious. Understanding how CSD is transmitted and recognizing the symptoms will help protect children from contracting it.
Five-year-old Andrew loved wrestling with his new kitten, and his mother wasn't surprised to see little hair-line scratches up and down her son's arms -- they both liked to play rough, and she figured it would teach Andrew to be gentle. What she was surprised to discover however, was that those "learning experiences" put her son at risk of developing Cat Scratch Disease.
Caused by a tiny organism called Bartonella henselae, Cat Scratch Disease is a zoonosis: a disease that can be transmitted between humans and animals. In this case, cats infected with Bartonella don't become ill themselves; they simply act as reservoirs for the organism. Researchers believe Bartonella is spread between cats by fleas that jump from cat to cat, inoculating with every bite. Kittens are more susceptible to contracting the organism than adult cats, and owners of kittens infested with fleas are 29 times more likely to develop Cat Scratch Disease than people with flea-free cats.
The risks of humans contracting CSD are small. Not all cats carry the organism, and not all people who live with a carrier cat will be infected. Research published in the December 1998 Compendium of Veterinary Medicine shows that only 25 to 40 percent of pet cats are carriers. In 1993, the incidence of Cat Scratch Disease was listed at less than one case per 100,000 people, but here's the significant fact for parents: the majority of those cases were in children between 5 and 14 years of age.
