American Medical Association Family Medical Guide - American Medical Association [650]
• If you have a cat, don’t clean the litter box yourself. Have someone clean it for you every day to reduce the chances of being exposed to infectious toxoplasma oocysts (which take up to 2 days to become infectious). If you have to clean a litter box, put on rubber gloves before you do it and avoid inhaling the dust from the litter box. Dispose of the litter in a tightly wrapped and tied plastic bag. Wash the dust off the gloves with soap and water and rinse them before taking them off. Then wash and rinse your hands thoroughly.
• Don’t eat raw or undercooked meat—especially lamb, pork, or venison—and don’t feed it to your cat. Cook meat to an internal temperature of 160°F. Microwaving does not kill the toxoplasma parasite.
• Wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw meat.
• Don’t taste meat while it is cooking.
• Keep your cat indoors so it doesn’t come into contact with infected birds or rodents.
• Wear gardening gloves when working in the garden because outdoor cats defecate in soil. Avoid touching your mouth while gardening and always wash your hands after gardening.
• Stay away from children’s sandboxes, or keep them tightly covered. Cats sometimes use them as litter boxes.
• Wash all fruits and vegetables well before eating them, even if they were grown in your own garden.
Rabies
Rabies is a life-threatening disease caused by a virus that is spread to humans through a bite or scratch from an infected animal. Once the rabies virus enters a human, it travels to the nerve nearest the bite and follows the nerve pathway to the brain. In the United States, rabies rarely occurs in dogs or outdoor cats because most are vaccinated annually. The wild animals that most often carry rabies are raccoons, skunks, bats, foxes, and coyotes.
Symptoms
The incubation period for rabies (the time it takes from being exposed to the virus until the appearance of symptoms) varies from 10 days to 2 years but is usually about 1 to 3 months. The earliest symptoms of rabies can resemble those of other viral infections and include fever and a general feeling of illness. After 2 or 3 days of feeling ill, a person becomes confused and agitated and has mouth and throat spasms; these symptoms usually last from 2 to 10 days. Trying to drink will worsen the spasms (this is why rabies is also called hydrophobia, which means fear of water). Death usually occurs within 3 weeks after the appearance of symptoms.
Diagnosis and Treatment
If you have been bitten or scratched by an animal that could have rabies, call your doctor, 911 or your local emergency medical number, or go to the nearest hospital emergency department immediately. A delay in treatment increases your risk of dying of rabies. If possible, the animal should be captured (but not destroyed) so tests can be performed to determine if it has rabies. You will probably be given an injection of immune globulin (proteins that fight the rabies virus) and a five-shot series of rabies vaccine to help prevent the disease from developing. The injections are usually given in the arm over a period of 28 days.
Avoiding Animal Bites
Take the following steps to avoid being bitten by an animal or infected with rabies:
• Don’t keep wild animals as pets.
• Don’t make any sudden moves or gestures toward an unfamiliar animal.
• Don’t tease, provoke, or surprise an animal, especially when it is resting or eating.
• If confronted by an animal, back away slowly.
• If you have frequent contact with wild animals, talk to your doctor about having a rabies vaccination regularly.
• Have your pets immunized against rabies every year.
Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is an infection caused by bacteria that are transmitted to humans through the bites of infected ticks that live on animals such as deer, mice, rabbits, and raccoons. The ticks that carry Lyme disease can also carry ehrlichiosis (see page 945)