the parents of a previously healthy 14-year-old boy were shocked when he told them he was an “evil, damned son of the devil” who wanted to kill himself before he could harm his loved ones.the parents had him hospitalized in october 2015, where doctors prescribed medication for major depressive disorder with psychotic features. their son was released from the hospital a week later, still experiencing psychosis, but no longer exhibiting homicidal or suicidal tendencies. little did they know, their nightmare, as documented in the
journal of central nervous system disease, was just beginning.over the next two years, their once-bright son became increasingly dysfunctional, developing severe symptoms of mental illness, including irrational fears, phobias, obsessional intrusive thoughts, rage outbursts and psychotic thinking. attending school became an impossibility and, after he required a second hospitalization in december, 2015, his mother quit her job to care for him full-time.he soon came to believe he possessed special powers and that one of the family cats wanted to kill him. as doctors would soon discover, he may have been on to something.after endless consultations, inconclusive tests and ineffective psychotropic medications, the breakthrough came in august, 2016, when the boy’s parents noticed what appeared to stretch marks on his thighs and armpits. closer inspection led to a suspicion these faint lines may not be stretch marks at all, but scratches from the family cat that transferred a deadly pathogen to the young patient.bartonella henselae, one of the most common bacteria in the world, lives in the blood of cats and kittens. if transferred to humans, however, it can cause the creatively named “cat-scratch disease” — a condition that can cause localized swelling, lesions and, it’s worth noting, devastating heart and nervous system issues.“our publication and the research being done in a few laboratories is starting to emphasize that this is an extremely important genus of bacteria that has gone historically under-recognized, and that it could potentially be causing a tremendous amount of undiagnosed disease worldwide,” the study’s lead author, ed breitschwerdt, a professor of veterinary sciences at north carolina state university,
told gizmodo.a closer look at the boy’s case history revealed the family used to own two cats that were adopted as strays in 2010, one of which arrived with an open wound on its back that required treatment. the boy had received scratches and bites prior to the onset of illness that had not been fully explored due to the psychosis. the family had since gotten rid of the animals — no doubt because their son believed they wanted him dead — but the damage may have already been done.armed with a promising new diagnosis, the boy’s parents contacted breitschwerdt, a veterinarian who has been studying the bartonella genus of bacterium for 30 years, and finally put their son on the road to recovery. treatment was not easy, but after months of targeted antibiotic therapy — and a few painful complications — his symptoms slowly began to fade. by september 2017, two years and us$400,000 in medical bills later, the boy was back at school and once again rising to the top of his class.while this case had a happy ending, a frustrated breitschwerdt said bartonella
is one of medicine’s most important untold stories. science has been aware of cat-scratch disease and other conditions caused by the bacterium for more than 100 years but he believes it is also secretly responsible of a host of neurological and chronic diseases suffered by humans, partly because of how elusive its presence is in the human body. “it takes 10 years before something added to the medical textbooks gets widely spread in practice,” he said. “we’re working on changing those textbooks.”and while he’s happy about the increased attention the subject is getting, and that his young patient fully recovered, he said he’s disappointed it came at the expense of the boy’s once-loved pets. “honestly, as a veterinarian, that was one of the saddest parts to hear.”
dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.cadon’t miss the latest in health. subscribe to healthing’s daily newsletter.
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