The Center for Tropical Diseases (Bach Mai Hospital) admitted a couple from Hai Duong who were both hospitalized with a high fever of over 39 degrees Celsius, chills all over their bodies, and swollen, inflamed, and infected wounds on their hands.
Through medical history, the patient said that about a week before being hospitalized, while the couple was chasing a mouse, they were bitten on the finger and it bled. Both of them only washed their hands with soap and put essential oil on the wound, but after 5 days, both of them had high fever, sometimes even lying lethargic, delirious, chills all over the body, the mouse bite was swollen and painful. After 2 days of monitoring at home, seeing no improvement, the couple went to the district hospital for examination, received tetanus shots and were transferred to Bach Mai Hospital.
At the Tropical Disease Center, the patient was diagnosed with “Rat-Bite Fever” (Sodoku). After more than a week of active treatment with an effective antibiotic regimen, the clinical signs improved significantly.
Associate Professor, Dr. Do Duy Cuong - Director of the Center for Tropical Diseases, Bach Mai Hospital said that rat-bite fever (Sodoku) is a systemic infection - poisoning caused by a spirochete called Spirillum minus found in the throat of rats, transmitted directly through rat bites.
The incubation period of the disease is from 3 days to 2 weeks. The signs of the disease are usually high fever, chills that occur periodically and recur, muscle pain, joint pain, headache, sore throat, lymphadenitis, vomiting, fatigue, even delirium and coma. If the poisoning is severe and not treated promptly, it can lead to complications such as meningitis, hepatitis, pleurisy, myocarditis, arthritis, more severe is bacteremia, endocarditis, and even death. At the rat bite site, there may be lesions such as swelling, edema, sometimes rash, necrotic hemorrhage and reactive lymphadenitis in the area.
Many people think of the plague when they are bitten by a rat. In fact, rat-bite fever (Sodoku) and the plague are two different diseases. The plague is an acute toxic infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted from rodents (including rats) to humans through the bite of fleas, or from person to person through the respiratory tract. Therefore, rats are also victims of the plague.
There are also concerns that rabies can be transmitted by rat bites, but in reality there have been no records of rats transmitting rabies to humans. Tetanus is a systemic infection caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, the rate of transmission to rats is low, but precautions must still be taken because rats live in humid environments, and rat bites are anaerobic places that can be favorable conditions for tetanus spores to develop.
Infection - poisoning due to rat bites is not a common disease, however in reality there have been many recorded cases requiring hospitalization and having many complications, complicated disease progression, threatening life.
