Associated Press
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press
FALLON, Nev. – A rare bacterial disease known as Q fever is turning up in a rural northern Nevada county that also is home to a childhood leukemia cluster, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Nevada had eight reported cases of Q fever in 2007, six of them in Churchill County, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. In 2006, the state had seven reported cases, all of them in Churchill County.
Since 1997, 17 children with ties to the county seat of Fallon have been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. Three have died. Health officials say about one leukemia case in five years would be expected.
Tammy Sneddon of Fallon said both her 41-year-old husband, Chris, and a 65-year-old man who lived next door had been diagnosed with Q fever before dying of aneurysms last year.
She criticized state health officials, saying the cases should be investigated further and the public needs to be aware of the illness.
She lives in a Fallon subdivision that was agricultural land 15 years ago, she said. People usually become infected with Q fever by breathing airborne particles that contain bacteria spread by farm animals.
“Both Chris and our neighbor had it and were dead a few months later,” Tammy Sneddon said. “Q fever is usually associated with people who work around farm animals, but neither man had any contact with farm animals. Wouldn’t the state want to look into this and try to see where it came from?”
Dr. Ihsan Azzam, Nevada state epidemiologist, said every case of Q fever in Nevada has been investigated and the number of the county’s cases can be explained by doctors in an agricultural area being more inclined to test for the disease.
He said the cases are nothing to be alarmed about and it’s a coincidence that the two next-door neighbors died within months of each other in the town 60 miles east of Reno.
“Is there a Q fever problem in Churchill County? To look at the numbers and say ‘yes’ would be to significantly blow this out of proportion,” Azzam told the Gazette-Journal.
“If there is a source in Fallon, it may be there, but the source is not a danger to the rest of the community. We’re not seeing a lot of people in Fallon who have similar diagnosis,” he added.
The disease is under-reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Western states usually confirm a handful of cases each year.
Azzam said a diagnosis of Q fever is “very hard to confirm,” and most reported cases are just probable cases. He said he’s certain that Chris Sneddon’s death had nothing to do with Q fever.
Tammy Sneddon said her husband’s medical records show he suffered from chronic Q fever.
“There ought to be interviews and soil samples taken when things like this happen,” she said. “No family should have to go through what we went through.”