Tick-Borne Infection of Dogs Also Turning Up in Humans

Researchers have for the first time detected in humans a tick-borne infection caused by a bacterium that was thought to sicken only dogs. The doctors found four human cases of the infection, called ehrlichiosis, in Missouri between 1996 and 1998, and four more cases during this tick season in Missouri, Tennessee and Oklahoma, they report in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. Approximately 1,200 cases of ehrlichiosis caused by other bacteria have been reported in the United States since 1986, but these were the first cases caused by the bacterium that previously had been identified only in dogs.

--Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II