Abstract
ABSTRACT Toxigenic Corynebacterium ulcerans may cause both respiratory and cutaneous diphtheria in humans. As a zoonotic emerging pathogen it has been isolated from a wide variety of animals living in captivity, such as livestock, pet, zoo and research animals and additionally in a large number of different wild animals. Here we report the isolation of tox-positive C. ulcerans in four hedgehogs with cutaneous diphtheria and pneumonia, respectively.
Highlights
Diphtheria and diphtheria-like illness are caused by Corynebacterium species harbouring the diphtheria toxin (DT) encoding tox gene
Diphtherialike human infections with toxigenic Corynebacterium ulcerans have outnumbered those caused by toxigenic C. diphtheriae in many industrialized countries [1,2,3]
Because of an extremely retarded wound healing and severe loss of weight the animal was transferred to a private hedgehog rescue station in March 2018, where the animal (750 g) was presented to another veterinarian and taken care of
Summary
Diphtheria and diphtheria-like illness are caused by Corynebacterium species harbouring the diphtheria toxin (DT) encoding tox gene. While about 50 years ago human cases of C. ulceranscaused disease were associated with consumption of raw milk and dairy products or contact to cattle [3,4,5], most C. ulcerans infections since have been described after contact with domestic animals such as pet dogs and cats [3,6,7,8,9,10,11] or – less often – after occupational contact with livestock animals such as pigs [12,13] Both non-toxigenic and toxigenic C. ulcerans as emerging zoonotic pathogens have been isolated from a wide variety of animal species, either from zoo, shelter, research or herd animals with human contact, e.g. water rats [14], shelter dogs [15,16], macaques [17,18], killer whales [19], a lion [19], a dromedary [20], ferrets [21], a goat [22], a cow [23] and ground squirrels [24] or from free-roaming animals such as otters [25], roe deer [26,27], wild boars [27,28], red fox [29], Ural owl [30] and Japanese shrew-moles [30] (Table 1). We report on the unusual finding of toxigenic C. ulcerans in four hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), three of them without known previous contact to humans
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