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A 10-year-old girl caught a gruesome infection after playing in a pigsty, researchers said.
The “otherwise healthy” girl, who was not named, played in a pigsty without wearing shoes, researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The girl suffered papules and lesions on the soles of her feet and on her toes for 10 days before being taken to a primary care clinic.
“The lesions had black dots in the center and were painful. Two weeks earlier, the family had traveled to rural Brazil,” the researchers wrote.
The girl was diagnosed with tungiasis.
Tungiasis is a skin infestation caused by the sand flea Tunga penetrans, an ectoparasite that is found throughout tropical and subtropical parts of the world, the researchers said.
According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the infection, also known as sand flea disease.
“It belongs to the neglected tropical diseases and is prevalent in South America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Tungiasis predominantly affects marginalized populations and resource-poor communities in both urban and rural areas. In the endemic areas, patients do not have access to effective and safe treatment,” researchers wrote in a study published in the library.
The World Health Organization said that 99 percent of the lesions occur at the feet.
The disease is known by many names across the Americas, including kuti, ogri eye, and nigua.
“Tungiasis thrives where living conditions are precarious, such as villages located in remote beaches, communities in the rural hinterland, and shanty towns of big cities. In these settings the poorest of the poor carry the highest burden of disease,” the organization stated.
In developed areas, treatment is usually done with drugs.
California Sees Increase in Cases of Valley Fever
A deadly fungal disease found in soil and spread by wind in California’s Central Valley is on the rise, with an increase of hundreds of new cases.
Documented cases of Valley fever increased by 11 percent in 2018, according to the California Department of Health (pdf). Officials found 7,886 cases versus 7,090 cases the previous year.
The number of cases in the first half of 2018 increased dramatically as opposed to the previous year, with 1,100 cases in January alone. There were at least 534 recorded cases every month.
“We’ve seen a lot more cases recently,” Michelle Rivera, a health education specialist for Fresno County, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Not all providers are testing for it so there might be more cases out there.”
The increase in recent years has been dramatic—in 2000, just 816 cases were seen statewide. In 2012, more than 4,000 cases were recorded. During that time period, an average of 78 deaths occurred annually from the disease, according to death records.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Valley fever, known as Coccidioidomycosis among medical professionals, is an infection caused by a fungus that’s known to live in the soil in the southwest United States as well as parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America.
“People can get Valley fever by breathing in the microscopic fungal spores from the air, although most people who breathe in the spores don’t get sick. Usually, people who get sick with Valley fever will get better on their own within weeks to months, but some people will need antifungal medication. Certain groups of people are at higher risk for becoming severely ill,” the CDC stated.
