Here is a guide for Tularemia, Get all insights like symptoms, causes, complications, And treatment!

Dr Narendra Chahal
2 min readJul 22, 2021

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What is Tularemia?

Typically caused by bacteria called Francisella tularensis, it is one of the rarest human diseases. Tularemia is also called deer fly fever or rabbit fever, as it mostly affects animals like hares, rabbits, and rodents, such as squirrels and muskrats.

It can also infect animal species like sheep and companion animals, such as dogs, hamsters, and cats.

The bacteria infect the same area as they incubate. Tularemia enters your body through the eyes, skin, lungs, and mouth. The symptoms and their severity depend on the affected area.

Even though the disease is contagious, not a single has been reported that shows it’s widespread through human-to-human contact. Some of the ways are:

  1. Drinking polluted water: Contaminated Water can be a source of bacterial contact with infected animal species. Humans who drink or use contaminated water for personal use like drinking, cooking, bathing, or other personal uses, have been infected with oropharyngeal tularemia.
  2. Inhaling contaminated aerosols: Humans who acquired tularemia by inhaling bacterial dust or aerosols contaminated with F. tularensis bacteria can develop an illness like pneumonia.
  3. Contaminated agricultural and landscaping dust: Can be contaminated through infected water or animals that live near farming or landscaping activities areas. Especially when farm machinery like tractors or mowers runs over infected animals or carcasses and spreads the bacteria in the dust of agricultural areas.
  4. Infected tick and deer fly bites: Ticks like a wood tick (Dermacentor andersoni), and the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), can transmit the bacteria from one living organism to another. Mostly the disease spread through dog ticks (Dermacentor variabilis). These ticks are found in areas like forest or places which are wood oriented. Also, pets like dogs, cats, rabbits, or any other animal can invite the infected tick or bacteria at home.

What are the Symptoms of Tularemia?

If you want to know more about Tularemia- Symptoms, Causes, Complications, And Treatment then just visit this full article on Lybrate.

Originally published at https://www.lybrate.com.

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Dr Narendra Chahal
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I work as a General Physician for the past 14 years having a wide range of experience in handling patients in all kinds of General Physicians range!