Today in strange patienta young woman almost lost her right eye because of her cat.

A 28-year-old woman visits a hospital in London, worried about her condition eyeeye right. In fact, the organ is in very poor condition! Swollen and purulent, it oozes a liquidliquid orange and its sclera, commonly known as “the white of the eye,” is no longer clear but completely red. It’s been five days symptomssymptoms have appeared and they are only getting worse.

A disease transmitted by his cat

The doctors immediately prescribe him a cocktailantibioticsantibiotics and antiviral agents both directly into the eye and intravenously. But this “horse dose” has no effect! Her eye continues to necrotize and the patient is at risk of losing her sight. Even more worryingly, she now has ophthalmoplegia, which means paralysis movementsmovements of the eye, suggesting that her optic nerve is affected by the infection that is eating away at her. She underwent emergency surgery for relief pressurepressure which compresses its orbit ocularocular and clean dead tissue.

The cause of this impressive infection is still unclear, but one detail is attracting the attention of doctors. Two weeks before her eye health deteriorated, the patient’s cat developed skin lesions on her paws and head. What if he was the one who had made her sick?

A sterile swab is passed over the patient’s eye and taken to the laboratory for analysis. The test is positive for an orthopoxvirus, the same one that caused the lesions on his cat’s paws. that felinesfelines gave him a virus. Analyze geneticgenetic allow to know preciselyspeciesspecies virus involved. This is the vaccine or ” cupscups of cowcow »(cow cups, English). A virus that infects cattle and horses but can be transmitted to humans. The latter allowed the scientific development of a vaccine against human smallpox by Edward Jenner at the end of the 18th century.^e century.

The identified vaccine, doctors can adapt the treatment. It will take six months with tecovirimat, an antiviral drug that inhibits replicationreplication cowpox, in addition to other medications as well as another operation to treat the patient’s eye. Her vision was not affected by this severe infection, but she retained traces of her ophthalmoplegia.