Cases of an emerging zoonotic disease are increasing in Australia as scientists warn that it is also being found in wildlife on mainland Europe.
Known as rat lungworm, the disease is caused by a parasitic nematode worm with a complex life cycle usually involving slugs and snails and rats.
Symptoms of rat lungworm in humans include severe headaches, stiffness in the neck and back, nausea and sensitivity to light, and it can occasionally result in the victim falling into a coma and even dying.
People can contract it by eating infected molluscs, other invertebrates such as prawns, or by coming into contact with, and accidentally consuming, rat faeces.
In 2010, a 19-year-old Australian man from Sydney, Australia, fell into a coma for more than a year after eating a slug for a dare. When he regained consciousness, he was paralysed from the waist down and he died in 2018.
A new paper published in April showed that incidence of the disease in dogs – which, like humans can die from it – is increasing on the Australian east coast. "The mortality rate [in dogs] ranges from 14% to 58% and the most recent update in Australia revealed an increasing number of cases from 2010 to 2020, suggesting escalating human health threats,” the paper, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, warns.
The nematode responsible for rat lungworm, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, was first discovered in China, and has since been found to be widespread throughout Southeast Asia and India and the Pacific Islands, and present in the Americas and the Caribbean. In Thailand, incidents of meningitis associated with the organism are estimated at 2 per 100,000 people per year.
In Europe, A. cantonensis has been discovered in both brown and black rats on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, North African hedgehogs on Mallorca and rats living in and around the port of Valencia on Spain’s east coast.
There have, however, been no confirmed cases of humans catching the disease from infected wildlife, in Spain or any other European country.
The British Pest Control Association says it’s believed that climate change and globalisation are to blame for rat lungworm’s spread to Europe. “It cannot be spread from person to person and it is very unusual for someone to become ill as a result of this parasite,” it says. “In most cases, the parasite will die over time – humans are not its preferred host.”
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