Psittacosis Pneumonia: Diagnosis, Treatment and Interhuman Transmission

Abstract

Psittacosis pneumonia is a zoonosis caused by Chlamydia psittacosis infection, mainly resulting from contact with aerosols of birds or poultry’s urine, feces, and excrement. The clinical manifestations range from general symptoms of infection to severe acute respiratory syndrome and systemic diseases, currently diagnosed using metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) to improve diagnostic accuracy. To date, most reports have only discussed human exposure to poultry disease. However, the latest studies have shown that human-to-human transmission of Chlamydia psittaci occurs not only between infected patients and their close contacts but also between secondary contacts. After looking back on relevant literature at home and abroad in the past ten years, this paper reviews the diagnosis, diagnosis and treatment, and progress in epidemiological research of Psittacosis pneumonia.

Keywords:

• Chlamydia psittaci
• psittacosis
• human-to-human transmission
• re-emerging pathogen
• mNGS

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Shandong Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Project, China [Grant/Award Number: 2020Z21].