Think twice before jumping into a scenic canal, since a beautiful sight can also lead to a painful eye infection. An 18-year-old man was rushed to a hospital in the Netherlands after two days of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. His heartbeat was also racing and his abdomen was feeling sensitive.
A look at his yellow, bloody eyes revealed the root of his discomfort. The whites of his eyes were seen with traces of blood as the blood vessels on the surface of his eyes had burst. There were parts of his eyes that had jaundice yellow. After some lab work, it came to be known that he had acute kidney injury and liver dysfunction.
The cause of his condition was that he had fallen into a canal three weeks before the symptoms. It wasn’t just human waste that was polluting the canal, since it was mixed in with the urine of infected rodents. Sensitive eyes don’t stand a chance against rodent waste.
Based on the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, “the man had a rare but severe bout of leptospirosis, which is a bacterial infection marked by fever, jaundice, kidney failure, and hemorrhage.” Leptospirosis is caused by the bacterium called Leptospira interrogans and the bacteria can be found in a range of wild animals.
The bacteria does pose a threat to humans and transmit through indirect contact with a common brown rat. The bacteria is found in traces of the animal’s urine, and people can become infected through exposure to contaminated water. It affects the eyes and when it makes its way down the bloodstream, it can impact the liver and kidneys.
For this canal swimmer, the bacterial infection led to a week’s stay in the hospital and a dose of antibiotics to get him up to recovery. All of his symptoms did subside after three weeks.
Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm2202675