Chlamydia Psittaci

00:01 Turning to something which is thankfully, far less common but a little bit cuter would be Chlamydia Psittaci causing Psittacosis or Parrot Fever such as we see in this beautiful and fascinating image on the screen.

00:15 Psittacosis is as I mentioned before, transmitted through dry bird feces, typically aerosolized to the human recipient when they’re changing the papers at the bottom of the cage.

00:28 Most Psittacosis is asymptomatic thankfully but it rarely can cause a mild flu-like illness progressing all the way up to a very serious interstitial pneumonia accompanied by respiratory failure, so, patients may become cyanotic, have air hunger, breathing difficulties.

00:46 If they have underlying chronic lung disease, they may then develop systemic disease because the lungs have allowed dissemination of the organism into other parts of the body.

00:56 Those patients may develop liver failure and jaundice and they may develop central nervous system involvement including seizures, severe headaches, and even encephalopathy and coma.