Cat-scratch disease, as the name suggests, is spread by cats. It has long been considered a mild illness, but a study finds that people are getting more serious complications, which can be fatal.
And kissing kittens increases the risk of being infected.
“The scope and impact of the disease is a little bit larger than we thought,” says Dr. Christina Nelson, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lead author on the study. It’s the first large-scale evaluation of the illness in the United States in over 15 years.
