What was initially thought to be cancer turned out to be a bacterial infection she may contracted from an animal.
As reported by Live Science on Tuesday, November 11, a 46-year-old Dutch woman asked for medical assistance after she suffered from very vague symptoms for a week. She complained about unusual exhaustion, night sweats, and fever. She also felt pain on the upper right corner of her abdomen, according to a gastroenterologist of Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis Hospital Dr. Marloes van Ierland-van Leeuwen.
To help identify the main source of her health problem, doctors ordered a CT scan, which revealed several issues, including lesions all around her body and nodules appearing in the duodenum and the pancreas.
Based on these initial findings, the doctor's first thought was cancer, but the biopsy came back negative. Rather, she had a bacterial infection, which tends to point to cat scratch disease caused by Bartonella henselae. Some of its symptoms include swollen lymph nodes, lack of appetite, and fever.
The bacterium comes from the droppings of fleas that thrive on a cat's skin. The more the cat scratches and bites on the fleas, the higher the chances it acquires the bacterium.
Although the real chances of passing on the bacterium from a cat to a human aren't so high, they can still happen if the person has been scratched or bitten by an infected cat, or when he or she has an open wound that makes a great entry point for this bacterium.
The bacterium then attacks the host starting from the site where the cat scratched, bit, or licked. However, when the problem gets worse, it can also affect other parts of the body, as in the case of the Dutch woman.
Moreover, if a person has a low immune system, the symptoms can get more severe and complicated, and lesions can appear on the spleen and liver.
Interestingly, though, the patient couldn't recall getting bitten or attacked by a cat but by a dog, which can also carry the same disease.
To relieve her of her symptoms, she underwent an antibiotic treatment for 5 days.