Seven people in South Dakota have contracted tularemia. The state health department reports the disease in six adults over the age of 50 and one child who is younger than five. Some needed to be hospitalized.
Health officials discovered all seven tularemia cases in the northern part of the Black Hills. State epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger says the disease is sometimes called rabbit fever.
"Tularemia is often found in rabbits, and people get infected when they kill a rabbit or are exposed to rabbit blood," Kightlinger says.
He says rabbits aren’t the only animals that carry tularemia. Rodents, flies, and ticks can spread the disease. So can cats, who can contract tularemia and spread it to humans. Kightlinger says the disease is rare, so it’s sometimes hard to recognize.
"There’s a wide range of symptoms that vary a lot, but the hallmark symptom is fever – typically a high fever, as high as 104 degrees. And if it’s a tick that bites you or a fly that bites you, you’re going to get a very bad sore or an ulcer at the point of the bite," Kightlinger says. "You could also get swollen lymph glands, or, if some rabbit blood splashes in your eye, you could get it in your eye. Or, if breathe in some of the blood particles, you could get tularemia pneumonia."
Kightlinger says doctors can treat the disease with antibiotics, but the illness is serious and can be deadly.
He says South Dakota usually sees only about half a dozen cases per year. Kightlinger says surrounding states are also seeing an increase in the number of tularemia diagnoses.