DIRTY RAT

Bite From Toilet-Dwelling Rat Lands Canadian Man in Hospital With ‘Severe Bacterial Infection’

Doctors think the rat’s mouth was temporarily contaminated with urine that contained the bacteria.

A bite from a toilet-dwelling rat ended in hospitalization for one unlucky man in Canada, who developed a severe bacterial infection after encountering the rodent. The 76-year-old man sustained bites to two of his fingers while he was trying to fish the rat out of his toilet bowl, and an initial visit to E.R. gave him basic wound care and a tetanus booster, after which he returned home. But almost three weeks later, the man was back in the hospital with low blood pressure, fever, headaches, and abdominal pain. Doctors learned he had multiple organ failure, kidney damage and signs of sepsis—further testing revealed he had leptospirosis, a bacterial infection caused by animal-to-human transmission. It can be life-threatening in a minority of cases. But in the rat-bitten man’s case, treatment with antibiotics helped ease his symptoms, and he was discharged within a couple of days. Doctors theorize that the rat’s mouth was temporarily contaminated with urine containing the bacteria, which then entered the man’s body through the puncture wound from the bite.