Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
This was posted in another thread last december.
I feel this is an important paper, worth a separate thread, although published about 10 years ago.
The conclusions of this paper were discarded in the Netherlands, we know what happened there recently.
Q Fever in Bulgaria and Slovakia
As a result of dramatic political and economic changes in the beginning of the 1990s, Q-fever epidemiology in Bulgaria has changed. The number of goats almost tripled; contact between goat owners (and their families) and goats, as well as goats and other animals, increased; consumption of raw goat milk and its products increased; and goats replaced cattle and sheep as the main source of human Coxiella burnetii infections.
Hundreds of overt, serologically confirmed human cases of acute Q fever have occurred.
Chronic forms of Q fever manifesting as endocarditis were also observed.
In contrast, in Slovakia, Q fever does not pose a serious public health problem, and the chronic form of infection has not been found either in follow-ups of a Q-fever epidemic connected with goats imported from Bulgaria and other previous Q-fever outbreaks or in a serologic survey.
Serologic diagnosis as well as control and prevention of Q fever are discussed.
Full report:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no3/serbezov.htm
I feel this is an important paper, worth a separate thread, although published about 10 years ago.
The conclusions of this paper were discarded in the Netherlands, we know what happened there recently.
Q Fever in Bulgaria and Slovakia
As a result of dramatic political and economic changes in the beginning of the 1990s, Q-fever epidemiology in Bulgaria has changed. The number of goats almost tripled; contact between goat owners (and their families) and goats, as well as goats and other animals, increased; consumption of raw goat milk and its products increased; and goats replaced cattle and sheep as the main source of human Coxiella burnetii infections.
Hundreds of overt, serologically confirmed human cases of acute Q fever have occurred.
Chronic forms of Q fever manifesting as endocarditis were also observed.
In contrast, in Slovakia, Q fever does not pose a serious public health problem, and the chronic form of infection has not been found either in follow-ups of a Q-fever epidemic connected with goats imported from Bulgaria and other previous Q-fever outbreaks or in a serologic survey.
Serologic diagnosis as well as control and prevention of Q fever are discussed.
Full report:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no3/serbezov.htm