A 38-year-old woman died in Villarreal (Castellón) when she went to the emergency department due to bite your hamster. Having walked the distance that separated him from home, collapsed a few meters from the doors of the sanatorium. Medical services could do nothing to save his life.
This case made headlines all day long in all media outlets. A woman felt unwell after being bitten by a hamster she had as a pet. But how can such an accident lead to death so quickly?
It is true that many pets, including dogs and cats, can cause bacterial infections through their bites. You may also become infected with a virus that is transmitted through saliva animal. But in neither case will death come so quickly. What stopped this woman’s heart? Perhaps it was a coincidence? A definite answer cannot be given until opening. But there is already a hypothesis that is gaining considerable strength.
Hamster bite allergy
The symptoms this woman experienced before her death are consistent with anaphylactic shock. This severe allergic reactionwhich is initially characterized by symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, bloating, difficulty breathing, abdominal pain and restlessness. The deceased reportedly went to the emergency room because he felt bad after a hamster bite. Specific symptoms have not been disclosed. But this is such a big picture that they could fit into it.
If treatment is not promptly started, anaphylactic shock may worsen. airway obstruction and cardiac and respiratory arrest. In this case, the patient went into cardiac arrest at the door of the medical center, so that would make sense.
All this would indicate that he allergy to your hamster. But if it was his pet, how did he not notice it until now? It seems that the hypothesis for this reason loses its meaning, but it must be taken into account that an animal can be allergic to different components of its body. Typically these are skin and hair cells. However, in some cases, the allergens that trigger the reaction are proteins present in substances such as urine or saliva.
If this woman was allergic to hamster saliva, she may not have known it until the hamster bit her and the squirrels. They went straight into his blood. Not only does it not cause a mild allergic reaction, but it can also directly cause anaphylactic shock.
Is this a common occurrence?
Cases like this woman are not common. Many people are allergic to their pets. Sometimes it is a mild allergy that can even be avoided by taking certain precautions. However, in cases as rare and specific as Villarreal’s, it is difficult to predict what might happen. If I had known, I could have taken an injection of adrenaline or antihistamines at home in case of such an eventuality.
In short, if you have a pet, carefully monitor your first contact with their fur or saliva to make sure you don’t have an allergy. These cases extremely rarebut it’s better to be prepared.
It is important to remember that without an autopsy we can only guess. From now on, it will be possible to find out whether what he suffered from the hamster bite was anaphylactic shock.
Source: Hiper Textual
