A teacher from Glasgow triggered an international health alert after contracting a potentially life-threatening virus from a litter of rats that she bred in her bedroom.
The 51-year-old mother of three visited Queen Elizabeth University Hospital with a fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and fatigue lasting five days.
She arrived with bleeding sores on her face, blood in her urine, red eyes, a temperature of almost 39C, and abnormally low blood pressure. Her 12-year-old daughter had suffered a fever a week before but recovered without treatment. Doctors were struggling to explain her symptoms until it emerged that the woman kept 37 rats in cages in her bedroom.
Researchers at the University of Glasgow, who published the woman’s case in a US-based health journal, said: “The patient and her daughter reported kissing the rats.”
The woman bought four stud rats from a local breeder three months before she became ill. Within three months she had a further 27 newborn or juvenile offspring.
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She was given medication but within 48 hours she developed an “acute kidney injury” and had trouble passing urine. The woman spent 12 days in hospital and had to be put on a fluid drip until her kidneys recovered. She was given the all clear a month later.
Local tests for leptospirosis, a condition contracted from rat urine, as well as rat-bite fever and hantavirus, were all negative.
Her samples were sent to Porton Down, near Salisbury, the UK’s primary laboratory for rare and imported pathogens which helped to detect coronavirus and the novichok nerve agent used to target the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. The laboratory revealed that the woman had contracted Seoul hantavirus, a disease first identified in soldiers who contracted hemorrhagic fever during the Korean War in the 1950s.
The Glasgow teacher’s hantavirus infection in 2019 has been flagged for international attention in the latest issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the peer-reviewed journal published monthly by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Glasgow University researchers, who submitted his study, said: “Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), especially cases associated with Hantaan virus, is responsible for many deaths in southeast Asia, whereas HFRS associated with Seoul virus causes relatively mild disease with a case-fatality rate of less than 1 per cent.
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“Seoul virus cases often begin with fever, malaise and gastrointestinal symptoms before progressing to shock and acute kidney injury of varying severity.”
Seoul hantavirus is extremely rare in Britain and the first case of domestic transmission was detected in 2012. It is most commonly found in agricultural workers but the researchers said there was growing evidence of Seoul virus circulation among pet rats.
They said: “The United Kingdom has a network of pet rat owners who trade rats for breeding. In 2013 Seoul virus was isolated from pet rats in a breeding colony linked to cases of human infection in the UK. Later, human cases associated with ratteries were reported in France and the Netherlands.
“In 2017, a large outbreak among pet rat owners was linked to in-home ratteries in the United States and Canada.”
The team of researchers sequenced the genome of the Glasgow case and found similarities with Seoul virus detected in other pet rats, suggesting the virus now spreading around the world originated from a single source rather than independently from wild rats.
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They said: “A recent study from the Netherlands revealed evidence of international trading of rats by breeding farms and private persons, a practice that might promote cross-border dispersal of this lineage. The risk for Seoul virus transmission from domesticated rats might be greater than that posed by wild rodents.”
A study in 2014 found that more than a third of pet rat owners in the UK had antibodies protecting them from Seoul virus, compared with about 3 per cent of blood donors in the general population.
The researchers said: “These findings might reflect the behaviours of owners of fancy rats who often view their pets as valued companion animals. Owners might not follow public health advice on preventive measures such as avoiding kissing or holding small mammals near the face and keeping rodents out of sleeping and eating areas.
“Public health messaging should be tailored to address the specific health beliefs of this community.
“Although the patient in this study agreed to the proposed euthanasia of her rats, the breeder pre-emptively removed them from the property and refused to co-operate further, mirroring the behaviour of breeders in other outbreaks. This pattern suggests breeders’ rejection of Seoul virus as a major pathogen. A holistic response to future outbreaks might prevent similar situations.”