Today in Weird patienta young woman almost lost her right eye because of her cat.
A 28-year-old woman goes to a London hospital, concerned about the condition of her right eye. Indeed, the organ is in very poor condition! Swollen and purulent, it oozes a liquidliquid orange and its sclera, commonly called the “white of the eye”, is no longer clear but completely red. It has been five days since the symptoms appeared and they are only getting worse.
A disease transmitted by his cat
The doctors immediately prescribed a cocktail of antibiotics andantiviralsantivirals both directly into the eye and intravenously. But this “horse dose” has no effect! Her eye continues to necrotize and the patient risks losing her sight. Even more worrying, she now has ophthalmoplegia, i.e. paralysis of the movementsmovements of the eye, which suggests that her optic nerve is affected by the infection that is eating away at her. She underwent emergency surgery to relieve the pressurepressure which compresses its orbitorbit ocularocular and clean out dead tissue.
The cause of this impressive infection is still unclear, but one detail caught the attention of doctors. Two weeks before her eye health deteriorated, the patient’s cat developed skin lesions on its paws and head. What if it was the cat that made her sick?
A sterile swab is passed over the patient’s eye and taken to the laboratory for analysis. The sample tested positive for orthopoxvirus, the same virus that caused the lesions on her cat’s paws. THE felinefeline transmitted a virus to him. Analyses geneticsgenetics allow you to know precisely thespeciesspecies viral involved. This is the vaccine or the ” smallpoxsmallpox of the cowcow » (cowpox, in English). A virus that infects cattle and horses, but can be transmitted to humans. The latter allowed the scientific development of a vaccine against human smallpox by Edward Jenner at the end of the 18th century.e century.
Once the vaccine has been identified, doctors can adapt the treatment. It will take six months of tecovirimat, an antiviral that inhibits the replicationreplication vaccine, in addition to other medications, as well as a second operation to treat the patient’s eye. Her vision was not affected by this severe infection, but she kept the traces of her ophthalmoplegia.
