Bacteria from pet cats may cause a rare and only recently recognized disease that is most common among patients infected with the AIDS virus, researchers say.
The study, which will appear Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates some 40 percent of healthy felines may carry the microbe, called Rochalimaea, in their blood.The University of California, San Francisco, study authors urged doctors to be on the lookout for the potentially fatal but treatable condition, bacillary angiomatosis, which causes blood vessels to grow out of control and form tumorlike masses in skin, bone, liver and other organs.
The problem is the disease - which can be cured with antibiotics - produces skin lesions very similar to those of such disorders as Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer of the skin common among people infected with HIV, they said.
The researchers found Rochalimaea henselae in all five study cats, pets of patients with the disease and infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
Additional tests showed of 61 healthy San Francisco area cats, 25, or 41 percent, carried the organism.
"This in no way means people should get rid of their cats," said Dr. Jane Koehler, who headed the study. "Americans live with 57 million cats in almost a third of our households, yet this disease is extremely rare."