SERENA ECOSERVIZI

Sanitary risks

Within urban ecosystems many rodents are often favorable conditions to the point of reaching very high levels of population. In particular, urban areas include environments that are capable of offering a safe haven, while waste of any kind produced by human activities constitute an inexhaustible source of food, able to stably support substantial populations of rodents for periods of time indeterminate. It is therefore not surprising as the rodents pose a terrible threat to the health and hygiene of man.
Living mostly between the dust and dirt rodents, in addition to being healthy carriers of many pathogens, they themselves are subject to the action of various diseases and pests, with very serious consequences on human health (anthropozoonoses, transmission of diseases from vertebrates to man): the most emblematic case is certainly one of the infamous plague, known as the "Black Death" and responsible in Europe between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a drastic population decline and a severe economic downturn.
Among the main rodent-borne diseases include:

• Lyme borreliosis, a disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and whose symptoms are severe and widespread pain in the limbs, multiple erythema migrants, meningitis and myocarditis, is transmitted to humans by the bite of ticks infected parasite of rodents;
• The Leptospirosis or Weil's disease, caused by the bacterium Leptospira interrogans and whose primary host is the brown rat, is transmitted to humans by contact with the urine of infected animals; cause discomfort, prolonged fever, worsening of renal function, conjunctivitis, jaundice, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, bleeding of the intestinal tract, muscle pain, weakness and prostration, if not diagnosed and treated promptly can lead to death;
• Salmonellosis, zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Salmonella enteritidis, is manifested by acute gastrointestinal infections, vomiting, fever and diarrhea is contracted as a result of the consumption of water or food contaminated by rodents or through the ingestion of infected meat and eggs not well cooked.
In addition to the more traditional bacterial diseases discussed above, rodents are vectors of important viral diseases (tick-borne encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, hantavirus and arenavirus syndromes, cowpox), rickettsial (murine typhus, Mediterranean spotted fever, human granulocytic ehrlichiosis), diseases caused by protozoa (toxoplasmosis, leishmaniasis, babesiosis, Chagas' disease, cryptosporidiosis, giardiasis) and helminth infections (schistosomiasis, angiostrongylosis, alveolar echinococcosis).