Monkeypox Outbreak Highlights Potential Risks of Owning and Handling Exotic Pets, Wild Animals, and Birds.

Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE 2K

LARCHMONT, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 13, 2003

In the United States there is a growing trend towards a variety of exotic pets: ferrets, hedgehogs, sugar gliders, chinchillas, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, numerous reptiles, and even skunks. The recent outbreak of monkeypox in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois with one incident in New Jersey illustrates the danger of zoonoses - diseases caused by agents that infect both humans and other animals. This first occurrence of monkeypox infection in humans in the Western hemisphere is probably due to pet prairie dogs and Gambian giant rats, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

"The simplest advice, especially for parents of young children, is to use common sense and only keep domestic animals since the behavior of wild animals is unpredictable. For the exotic pet purchaser, an age-old Latin phrase seems especially relevant: Caveat emptor - 'Let the buyer beware'!!" according to the Editor-in-Chief of Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, Stephen Higgs, Bs.C., Ph.D., FRES (Department of Pathology, Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Sealy Center for Vaccine Development and WHO Collaborating Center for Tropical Diseases, UTMB at Galveston). Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com/vbz), the only medical journal specifically devoted to such diseases.

"If you must have an exotic pet, I would recommend that you only purchase captive-bred animals and not buy animals captured from the wild," says Dr. Higgs. "In the past we thought that new diseases usually emerge as the result of human encroachment into wild areas, but it now seems that we are providing new opportunities for these infectious agents by bringing them into our urban environment, and even into our homes. The recent emergence of SARS from civet cats traded in Asia and now monkeypox from prairie dogs is a clear illustration that there are still unknown agents that can infect humans and we do not fully appreciate the risks that these pose to ourselves and our children."

Anthrax, rabies, and Ebola may be the most well known and feared of zoonotic diseases, but there are a plethora of others that can be contracted from a wide variety of species. Cat-scratch disease, hantaviruses, leptospirosis, Lyme disease, salmonella, typhus, and numerous parasitic diseases are amongst the many that can be transferred from wild animals and birds to humans. The potential for such diseases to spread is well illustrated by West Nile virus, which since its introduction to New York in 1999, has spread to all but four mainland states. Thousands of avian, equine, and human cases have occurred in just four years, with 284 human deaths last year alone.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, such as Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Strategy, Practice and Science (www.biosecurityjournal.com) and Viral Immunology. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.'s biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 60 journals, books, and newsletters is available at www.liebertpub.com.