Wild Iguana Ruins Little Girl’s Vacation, Gives Her Rare Bacterial Infection
It’s a tale as old as time: a little girl sits down to eat her cake while on vacation in Costa Rica, gets her dessert stolen by a wild iguana that also bites her hand, and then develops a rare bacterial infection.
This particular case of insult-to-injury was reported by Stanford doctors in April. Though the girl had her hand disinfected and was given antibiotics soon after the incident, the iguana’s bite left a bump that refused to go away, and it only grew bigger and more painful over time. By the time she saw the doctors five months later, they had to remove a nearly 1-inch mass of pus from her hand. They then confirmed she had caught the bacteria Mycobacterium marinum.
Cases of M. marinum in humans have been reported before, but it’s usually caught from exposure to infected fish. As far as the report authors know, this is the first time someone is known to have caught it via iguana. Ruined vacation memories aside, the girl’s infection was successfully treated.
