Q fever studies in Southern California; summary of current results and a discussion of possible control measures.

Abstract

For the past two and a half years representatives of the United States Public Health Service, the California State Department of Public Health and health departments of the county and city of Los Angeles, assisted by many local physicians, have been investigating the occurrence of Q fever in Southern California. These studies began in 1947 following Young's discovery of Q fever among patients in Artesia, 1 a dairy community located in Los Angeles County. Shepard and Huebner found that 15 of 17 patients with Q fever in this area lived close to dairies or visited them and that serums of many local dairy cows contained antibodies for the disease. 2 Huebner, Jellison and others recovered Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, from the milk of cows and showed that the pooled raw milk of two thirds of 63 dairies tested in the Los Angeles area contained the organism