Miss Yu (pseudonym), a 39-year-old white-collar worker, could not have imagined that if the pet store "sucked a cat once", she would have a high fever. It turned out that she was infected with Chlamydia parasitta.
On December 24, the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter learned from Shanghai Changzheng Hospital that Miss Yu, who came to the hospital recently, was suspected of contacting pet cats carrying Chlamydia psittaci or inhaling air particles containing Chlamydia psittaci when "sucking cats", and after targeted anti-infection and symptomatic treatment, she has been cured and discharged from the hospital.
According to the hospital, Miss Yu initially had symptoms of fever and chills, thinking that it was a cold. After medical treatment, she was found to have a body temperature of up to 40 °C, and blood tests showed that the white blood cells reached 10.47 ×109/L, the neutrophil ratio was 69.70%, and the hypersensitive C-reactive protein was 29.62 mg/L.
The doctor treated the anti-infection treatment with levofloxacin combined with ceftriaxone for 3 days, and Miss Yu's body temperature still lasted 39-40 ° C, and she had a cough, coughing up a small amount of white sputum, chest tightness, and the symptoms gradually worsened. If you look up ct of the chest, the doctor's diagnosis is "inflammation of the upper lobe of the left lung and the lower lobe of the right lung".
Miss Yu's chest CT diagnosis is "inflammation of the upper and lower lobes of the right lung" from the WeChat public account of "Shanghai Changzheng Hospital"
After two hospitals without success, Miss Yu was admitted to the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of Shanghai Changzheng Hospital.
Because Miss Yu still had repeated fever after routine treatment, Long March Hospital conducted bronchoscopy and bronchoalveolar lavage for Miss, and the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid was sent for metagenomics sequencing, and finally found the "culprit" of fever - Chlamydia psittaci.
Detection of Chlamydia psittaciformis Picture from the "Shanghai Long March Hospital" WeChat public account
The doctor further asked that the patient said that he did not have a history of direct contact with birds and poultry, but had "sucked cats" in pet stores before fever. After that, after anti-infection treatment with doxycycline combined with azithromycin, Miss Yu's body temperature returned to normal, and her cough and chest tightness improved significantly compared with before.
According to the hospital, Psittacosis is a zoonotic disease named after its pathogen Chlamydia psittaci (C. psittaci), which is mainly parasitic to birds of the family Parrotidae. Chlamydia psittaci is widely parasitic in a variety of birds such as parrots, pigeons, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, mammals such as cows, horses, cats, rodents, etc. are also its relatively rare hosts.
Parrot fever is mostly sporadic cases, often seen in households with pet parrots and handling live poultry. Outbreaks are highly correlated with occupational exposure, occurring in poultry processing and slaughterhouses, farms, veterinary clinics, veterinary schools, pet shops and other places.
Humans can become ill by inhaling air particles containing pathogens or coming into contact with feathers from sick birds. Symptoms are mostly influenza-like, with the respiratory system being the predominantly affected system, and severely ill patients can rapidly progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome or even multiple organ failure.
According to the doctor's analysis, the patient had no history of bird and poultry contact before the onset of the disease, and it was most likely that in the process of "sucking cats" in the pet store, he contacted a pet cat carrying Chlamydia psittaci or inhaled air particles containing Chlamydia psittaci and caused the disease.