Invisible’s new HEALTH Risk Assessment Tool is a one-page checklist that helps patients think about exposures to environmental, animal, and travel-related diseases that might be contributing to ill health. This free, downloadable checklist can be reviewed by patients in clinic waiting rooms or used by clinicians to guide patients through questions about risk factors.

The HEALTH Risk Assessment Tool was developed by animal and human clinicians to help health-care providers recognize potential zoonotic, vector-borne, and environmental illnesses risks, and point them to evidence-based resources for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Each HEALTH question is linked to references and courses that help support clinical decision-making. Faster diagnoses reduce disease spread, delayed treatments, and patient suffering.

Its grid-layout includes six risk-category columns, each with questions about potential exposures to bites, environmental toxins, animals, risky outdoor activities, foodborne pathogens, and travel-related disease. It can also be used to educate patients about health risks such as toxic algae blooms, mold, and sleeping with pets.

This resource is brought to you by the Invisible Education Initiative, generously funded by the Montecalvo Foundation as part of the Physician Resource Library. The expansion of our education efforts relies on tax deductible donations. Please consider making a contribution here to join our education efforts. For larger donations that empower us to attend more medical conferences, and develop new clinical tools and CME courses, please reach out to us at Laura@invisible.international. Together, we can educate more physicians on how to recognize and treat vector-borne and environmental illness, starting with Lyme disease. Together, we can save lives.

For other clinical tools, visit our Resources page.

Invisible educators are presenting on “One Health Clinical Tools for Primary Care” at 11:50am on Friday, May 19, at the online Primary Care Update 2023, hosted at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. In this course, these clinicians will discuss diagnostic strategies using the One Health framework, which recognizes that the health of people, animals, and the environment are intertwined. Lyme disease will be used to illustrate this approach, using relevant peer-reviewed studies on tick-borne diseases.

Speakers include Nevena Zubcevik, DO, Chief Medical Officer of Invisible International, previously co-founder and co-director of the Dean Center for Tick Borne Illness at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School; and Elizabeth Maloney, MD, Education Co-director at Invisible, a Minnesota family physician, and the founder/president of Partnership for Tick-borne Diseases Education, a nonprofit providing evidence-based education on tick-borne diseases.

This event is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), with CME credits available to attendees.

This year Invisible is taking its medical education on the road, sending our experts to conferences and hospitals, to teach frontline health-care providers about best practices for diagnosing and treating of tick-borne diseases. Please support our efforts by donating here, because education saves lives.

If a person is diagnosed with cat scratch disease, what should be done with the pet cat that transmitted the disease? A recent case study in the American Journal of Ophthalmology provides guidance on this conundrum, presenting five clinical scenarios with remediation recommendations.

Cat scratch disease, caused by a Bartonella henselae infection, can be transmitted by fleas or animal bites. It typically starts with a fever and swelling or lesions at the wound site, appearing three to 10 days after the bite or scratch. Swollen lymph nodes may manifest one to two weeks later. Half of patients report headaches, lack of appetite, weight loss, vomiting, and, occasionally, eye problems.

Co-author Edward Breitschwerdt, DVM, a leading expert on Bartonellosis in mammals, presents a One Health strategy in managing these situations, taking animals, humans, and their shared environment into account to optimize health outcomes for all. Together, the article’s authors developed five cat scratch disease scenarios and proposed remediation steps, all supported by recent findings in the veterinary literature.

In a nutshell, their recommendations are:

• Eradicate fleas from pets and keep them away from wild animals.
• Minimize human exposure to stray or poorly cared for animals.
• When an animal bite or scratch occurs, immediately clean it with warm, soapy water.
• When humans are infected, treat all family pets, because animals harboring Bartonella bacteria may not exhibit symptoms but may reinfect family members.

Invisible International offers a series of accredited medical education courses on Bartonella, presented by Dr. Breitschwerdt. These include: History of a hidden pandemic, Vectors and other modes of transmission, Reservoir hosts: Bats, cats, dogs, mice and men, Comparative infectious disease causation, Disease expression and host immunity, and Diagnosis of Bartonella species infections.

“Swamp Boy” tells the tale of a bright 14-year-old boy who suddenly hears demonic voices and experiences sudden-onset psychosis—He thinks he’s turning into Swamp Thing, a green, plant-covered monster. The story follows his parent’s hellish journey into the medical system as they struggle to save their oldest son from permanent residency in a psychiatric ward. His psychiatrists are convinced he has schizophrenia—until his determined father solves the mystery behind his delusions, offering the family hope and a cure. At the root of the teen’s medical problems was Bartonella henselae, the tiny stealth bacterium that causes cat scratch disease and disseminated Bartonellosis.

National Public Radio has posted a summary and patient interview on alpha-gal syndrome, a red meat allergy linked to lone star tick bites.

“Alpha-gal is a sugar molecule found in most mammals, including cows, lambs, and pigs. It can also be found in the saliva of ticks. Humans don't make alpha-gal, so it’s foreign to us, explains Dr. Scott Commins, an allergist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. When tick saliva goes through a person's skin and transmits alpha-gal, it can be a potent inflammation trigger.”