- In a rare attack, an iguana in Costa Rica bit a child for cake.
- Five months later, a strange cyst began to grow where the girl had been bitten.
- Scientists have discovered that the girl is infected with a rare bacterium. This is probably the first bacterium ever bitten by an iguana.
Scientists suspect the girl’s rare infection may be related to a rare encounter with an iguana craving cake.
CNN reported that a scientific presentation on the case of an unidentified 3-year-old girl will be presented at this month’s European Conference on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Last March, an unnamed girl was vacationing in Costa Rica with her parents. Her parents gave her a cake while she was playing in the water. Her wild iguana approached her, bit her finger and stole her cake.
“It was trying to mark its territory or something like that,” said Dr. Jordan Kit Maa, a medical microbiologist at Stanford University. guardian.
Iguanas are usually harmless herbivores, but this iguana seems to have developed a sweet tooth, reports CNN.
Her parents found the bite to be superficial, but still took her to a local clinic where the wound was disinfected and given antibiotics. Her wound healed, but five months later she noticed a bump in the same spot.
The girl said the bump didn’t hurt, but it grew to the size of a coin and was reddish-bluish in color, the Guardian reported.
My parents initially didn’t think the iguana bite was related. Doctors suspected it might be a cyst, but as it continued to grow, the parents noticed the bump was in the same location as the iguana bite, CNN reported.
The bump continued to grow and began causing mild pain, so the girl was sent to an orthopedic surgeon.
the girl grew up Mycobacterium marinum, It usually causes a tuberculosis-like disease in fish, but rarely infects humans. Humans usually get this infection when they have open wounds and come into contact with contaminated water. Ma told CNN he believes this is the first time humans have contracted the infection from an iguana bite.
“We know a lot about animal bites, bacteria and infectious diseases, like dogs and cats, but not so much about lizards, let alone iguanas,” he said. “I don’t think people should be afraid, but doctors should be aware of the possibility.”
He told The Guardian he wasn’t surprised it took this long for the girl to develop symptoms because the bacteria grows very slowly and has a long incubation period.
The infection does not respond well to typical antibiotics, but the girl was given the antibiotic rifampin and the antibiotic clarithromycin, and Mah says she is doing better.
“Usually with these infections, they take a very long time to grow and are a little picky, so they need to be treated for a longer period of time, sometimes for months,” Ma told CNN. She’s doing better, not 100%, but much better than when she started.”
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