Ep 103 Leptospirosis: Don't blame the rats

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.8 • 17.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of leptospirosis is chock full of variety. In terms of biology, any number of different Leptospira species and serovars can play a role in infection, and the resulting infection can run from asymptomatic to deadly. As for ecology, virtually any mammalian species can either act as an affected reservoir for the pathogens or fall victim to a deadly infection. The history of leptospirosis takes us across continents and through centuries, illustrating how changes in scientific thought and technology shaped our understanding of this and other zoonotic diseases. And the current status of this One Health disease is no less varied, both in the wide distribution of leptospirosis as well as the vastly differing (but disturbingly high) estimates of annual cases and deaths. In this episode, we do our best to tackle as much of the variety in this neglected disease as we can, from its impact on us and our furry friends, to the classic story of its discovery and the biggest remaining gaps in our knowledge today. Tune in for all this and more!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's hard to imagine losing a loved one, a wife, a husband, a child.
0:04.4	For many, it's their biggest fear.
0:06.4	Amarissa Jones, host of The Vanished.
0:08.9	A podcast that tells the stories of often overlooked and unsolved missing persons cases,
0:13.6	in an effort to uncover the truth.
0:15.8	Follow The Vanished on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:22.0	Hi, I'm Umat and when I was a graduate student, I was doing field work in Panama.
0:29.1	It was just this amazing place with tropical birds and I loved the fieldwork I did.
0:33.4	I had to like hike up these rivers in the forest and find these insects and it was so diverse and
0:39.7	amazing. But you know, it was also tropical. So we had, we were getting bit by insects.
0:44.7	We were getting water and foods. We, you know, we're dealing with a lot of animals and things and
0:49.8	those five of us living in this house is pretty crowded. Five of us and I kept.
0:53.4	And then one morning I woke up exhausted. I had had fever the night before and these awful
1:01.9	dreams and and a headache and I knew that something was up and so I, I just rested that day and I tried
1:10.3	to kind of, you know, nourish myself, have a lot of water, have a lot of food.
1:15.6	And I got, I felt better, you know, by the afternoon, I was able to take a walk and everything.
1:20.8	I said, okay, maybe this was just a short-term thing. Everything would be fine.
1:25.1	And then that night it was worse. I had this awful fever, really, really bad headaches.
1:31.7	And in the morning I was just feeling awful. And so, you know, I didn't have a car at the time and
1:37.1	luckily I got a friend of mine to drive, drive me to a clinic. And so I got to the clinic and I
1:44.2	explained my symptoms and, you know, they're like, well, this is, this sounds like Denge and we're
1:49.6	going to test your blood. And so they took a blood test and they didn't find Denge. So they sent me
	...

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