Zoonosis

A zoonosis (plural: zoonoses), also known as a zoonotic disease, is an infectious disease in humans (the host) for which another vertebrate animal can be the vector. Some zoonoses have an additional vector besides the vertebrate e.g. R. rickettsii is carried by ticks on mammals. Viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites can be zoonoses.

Epidemiology

60% of cases of infectious disease are zoonotic in origin ¹.

Pathology

Zoonoses may be spread through direct or indirect contact with animals. Diseases that cannot exist without humans are not considered zoonotic by all sources (e.g. variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), and neither are some diseases that may have begun as zoonoses but are predominantly transmitted by humans (e.g. HIV).

Examples of zoonotic diseases, with causative entities in brackets, include:

• anthrax (Bacillus anthracis)
• brucellosis (Brucella spp.)
• COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2)
• Ebola (Ebola virus)
• human African trypanosomiasis (Trypanosoma brucei)
• influenza
  • H1N1 influenza
• leishmaniasis (Leishmania spp.)
• leptospirosis (Leptospira spp.)
• Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (MERS-CoV)
• monkeypox
• Q fever (Coxiella burnetii)
• rabies (rabies virus)
• sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (SARS-CoV)
• tuberculosis (Mycobacteria spp.)
• tularaemia (Francisella tularensis)
• variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (prion)
• Zika (Zika virus)

History and etymology

In Greek, the word ζώο (zoo) means animal and νοσος (nosos) means disease ^2,3.

See also

• naming of organisms