• Question: What is the most contagious disease between humans and animals that you have researched?

    Asked by ǝǝɹ⊥ǝɥ⊥ to John on 7 Jan 2022.
    • Photo: John Tulloch

      John Tulloch answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      Ohh that is a great question! Contagious diseases are those that are spread through direct contact, rather than say through an insect bite. This narrows down the list a bit…. If you look at this government website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/list-of-zoonotic-diseases/list-of-zoonotic-diseases) you can see all the diseases that can spread between animals and people in the UK. Many are excellent spreading between humans to humans (eg COVID) or between animal to animal (eg Bird Flu) but not many a great at spreading between human an animals. Two contagious examples that are very common that I have worked with are cryptosporidium and ringworm. Crypto causes vomiting and diarrhoea and is often caught at petting zoos or open farms, I have investigated many of these outbreaks. Ringworm is a fungal skin disease caught by touching infected animals (normally cows), I have had this a couple of times!!

Comments

  • Photo: Samuel

    Samuel commented on :

    In my PhD I worked on E. coli, bacteria which can cause nasty food poisoning. A lot of these are common and quite harmless inside the guts of animals but cause disease if they get in a human. For example, from undercooked meat or if manure gets into water sources.