Zoonosis

According to the WHO a zoonosis is defined as ‘any disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans’. This is also stated in the EU-Zoonosis guideline (92/117 EWG), where zoonotic pathogens are summarized as ‘bacteria, viruses, parasites or else biological units that can cause a zoonosis’.

Therewith, a zoonosis is an infectious disease that can affect man as well as animals and can be transmitted between different species. Over 200 zoonoses have been described and they are known since many centuries. An emerging zoonosis was defined at the WHO-conference in Geneva in 2004 as a zoonosis that is ‘newly recognized or newly evolved, or that has already occurred previously but shows an increase in incidence or expansion in geographical, host or vector range’. Furthermore it was stated that some of these diseases ‘possibly develop and become transmissible between human beings’.

There might be no country in the world not being affected by any sort of zoonoses and in the field of small animals (cats and dogs), it is not only the stray animal which is playing an essential role in maintaining zoonotic infections, but also the companion animal.

In the field of canine vector borne diseases the following diseases are categorized as zoonoses: anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, Lyme borreliosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, canine bartonellosis, leishmaniosis, heartworm disease, subcutaneous dirofilariosis, West Nile Fever and thelaziosis.