Typhus strikes H.B. families

At least two human cases of flea-borne typhus in as many months in a section of Huntington Beach have the county urging residents to put their pets on a proven flea-control program.

The infections of humans by the disease, also known as endemic or murine typhus, have been confirmed in an area roughly bounded by Garfield Avenue, Adams Avenue, Magnolia Street and Beach Boulevard, Orange County Vector Control spokesperson Michael Hearst said.

The Monday after Halloween, Nanci Bartley woke up with what she thought was the flu; she was nauseated, and two of her friends also developed flu symptoms that day.

Two days later, her friends were on the road to recovery. But by then, Bartley was unable to eat or drink, and had started running a high fever.

She saw her doctor that Friday, who told her she had the flu. Bartley spent the weekend in bed, still unable to eat or drink; she occasionally would suck on ice chips to stay hydrated.

When Bartley returned to the doctor that Monday and had more bloodwork taken, she was sent straight to the emergency room.

Bartley spent several days at the hospital, where she developed the rash that is often associated with typhus, but remained undiagnosed.

Doctors ran several tests on her, and considered hepatitis or a gallbladder infection.

“It was a full 10 days of high fever and nausea,” Bartley said. “I started feeling better after they gave me antibiotics; I was able to take little bites of Jell-O.”

Finally Bartley was asked if she had been bitten by a mouse or fleas from a mouse; she said no.

“If they had said opossum, it would have clicked,” she said. “There are opossums in our back yard. My husband found a mother with eight babies in our back yard last year; the county has caught two, but the cages are still out.”

She had more blood drawn, and found that everything came back negative except for the typhus test.

“It had to have happened at my house,” Bartley said. “I’m in my back yard a lot, and I have two small dogs.”

Her grandchildren also play in the yard, in a neighborhood near Newland Street and Garfield Avenue.

“I told my neighbors to be on guard,” Bartley said. “I didn’t realize it, but I learned that opossums are walking fleabags.”

“Symptoms can include headache, chills, fever, aches and sometimes a rash — but that can seem like any number of illnesses, so the diagnosis is critical,” Hearst said.

The symptoms tend to take one or two weeks to begin after contracting the disease; a blood test is required to confirm whether typhus is present. After antibiotic therapy begins, the historically fatal disease improves rapidly.

“I lost 12 pounds over it, which was good,” Bartley laughed. She was unable to eat for about three weeks.

Hearst said there have been more documented cases of flea borne typhus in Orange County since 2006 than in the 50 years prior.

“It really started in 2006, and in 2007 and 2008 it popped,” Hearst said. “It’s not that the numbers are huge; it’s that they’re so much bigger than they used to be. We went 12 years without a case until 2006.”

Since then, 24 cases have been documented in the county, Hearst said; eight of those have occurred in Huntington Beach, with neighboring cities having the next highest incidence rates: five in Westminster and three in Fountain Valley.

“As the wild lands get smaller, wild animals spend more time in people’s backyards,” Hearst said. “Huntington Beach is sort of veined with undeveloped property like flood control channels.”

Seven human cases of the disease have been confirmed in Orange County in just the past eight months.

Another case involved a couple who took in a stray cat that turned out to be pregnant, Hearst said.

When the cat had kittens, the couple invited their grandson over to look at them.

Although the flea-ridden cat and its kittens were taken to the veterinarian for anti-flea treatment, by then both the grandparents and the grandson had been bitten by fleas, which transmitted typhus to all three family members.

The grandparents stayed in the hospital for five days; their grandson took more than a week to be released, Hearst said.

In the grandparents’ case, the Vector Control District immediately took countermeasures including taking blood samples and fleas from the infected cat and opossums in the neighborhood.

The fleas and blood samples were sent to the Centers for Disease Control for testing, as the Vector Control District doesn’t have the equipment or staff to test for the disease; likewise, no state agency will test for the non-humanly transmitted disease.

Hearst doesn’t recommend that people attempt to relocate stray cats and other wildlife from their neighborhoods, as it spreads the disease further and can affect other wildlife.

The district noted that it does not plan to control the opossum or stray cat population, as the disease is only transmitted from a female flea to its offspring. Stray cats, opossums, rats and raccoons are merely vehicles of nourishment and mobility, and typically don’t develop any symptoms of typhus themselves.

“The key is to break that bridge,” Hearst said. “The pet is the bridge. This is just one more reason not to feed wild animals, and to keep your pets on flea control.”

That means administering a flea-control program like Advantage or Frontline twice a year for every pet that has contact with the outdoors.

“Fleas that are already infected will hop on the family pet,” Hearst said. “That’s what brings them into contact with the family. Oftentimes the host is not infected, but the fleas are. So it really comes down to flea control.”

“It’s kind of scary that Huntington Beach is getting so many breakouts,” Bartley said. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, and I’ve gone through three natural child births. I know what pain is.”

To contact the district, call (714) 971-2421 or visit ocvcd.org.

PREVENTION

Take these steps to prevent contracting typhus:

 Put pets on a flea-control program like Advantage or Frontline

 Don’t feed, have contact with or take in wildlife or stray animals

 Remove any outdoor food sources like pet food bowls, open trash cans or fallen fruit

 Clean up wood piles and other potential dwelling places for wildlife