Deadly cat-flea typhus strikes in Australia
ANGELA POWNALL, The West Australian January 3, 2011, 2:10 am

Scientists have identified the first known cases of humans being infected with cat-flea typhus in Australia, four years after the R. felis bacteria was discovered in fleas in WA.

A nine-year-old girl became seriously ill in Melbourne and her younger sister and brother, grandmother and neighbour had to be taken to hospitalafter they were bitten by fleas carrying the R. felis bacteria from kittens the family brought into their home.

Microbiologists warned in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia published today that many more Australians might have been infected by R. felis, but did not get the most effective treatment because the infection was not diagnosed.

Dr Stephen Graves, director of microbiology at the Hunter Valley Pathology Service in Newcastle, NSW, said GPs and hospitals did not use diagnostic tests that were available for R. felis, which could be treated with antibiotics.

"It's likely to be present all over Australia, I suspect. It's just that people haven't looked for it," Dr Graves said. "This little girl was really quite sick and in intensive care. She may have died if she had not got the right antibiotics ultimately."

There are numerous different types of rickettsia disease, which is a type of bacteria that is found in parasites such as fleas and ticks. Dr Graves said murine typhus, a rickettsia infection from rat fleas, was particularly common in WA.

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