CDC researchers warned clinicians March 27 about a potential resurgence of murine typhus, a rare flea-borne disease, according to MedPage Today.
Murine typhus, caused by the bacteria Rickettsia typhi, is seeing a rise in cases in Texas and California. In a Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity call, CDC researchers said the largely eradicated disease is reemerging.
Murine typhus was a nationally notifiable disease between 1930 and 1987, according to the CDC. Thousands of cases were reported annually during the 1930s and ’40s before a dramatic decline in the 1950s, when sanitation and pest control improved and fewer than 100 cases were reported each year.
Southern California, Hawaii and Southern Texas typically report the most U.S. cases. Since 2008, the number of reported cases has increased significantly, the CDC said, “suggesting that murine typhus may be considered a re-emerging infectious disease in certain areas of the United States.”
Common symptoms include fever and chills, body aches, loss of appetite, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, cough and rash, according to the CDC. Fatal cases are rare, accounting for less than 1% of all cases.
“Murine typhus is a disease that had all but disappeared from the United States and also disappeared from the minds of healthcare providers,” Johanna Salzer, PhD, the epidemiology team lead for the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said on the call, according to the report.
“But it is clearly returning, and our understanding of the current burden is almost certainly underestimated,” she said.
Murine typhus is treated with the antibiotic doxycycline, and people treated early with doxycycline usually quickly recover, the CDC said. There is no evidence of persistent or chronic infections.
