If you're walking down a New York City sidewalk on garbage day, you know you need to be on the lookout for runners cutting you off.
No, not joggers.
Runners. Scurriers. Rats.
According to ABC News, a new study from Columbia University might make you reconsider using the subway, where these "city kitties" dwell. Researchers have found that rats carry a slew of gross stuff, including E. Coli, Salmonella, and 18 other viruses previously unknown to health officials.
Not only do they carry viruses never-before-seen by science, they also carry the Seoul Hantavirus, which has never been documented in The Big Apple before.
According to ABC News, Dr. Ian Lipkin, an infectious disease expert at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said after September 11, he and the late molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg were talking about the possibility of biological warfare. They decided they needed a reference line of what germs were native to NYC.
"We decided to get a baseline to figure out what was in New York City streets and elsewhere so if something new appeared then we'd know it," said Lipkin, according to ABC News.
According to ABC News, it took Lipkin 10 years to get the funding plus four years to complete the study. Lipkin also said it took a whole year just to trap the 133 rats used in the tests.
"It's not easy to trap rats, they're really smart," said Lipkin.
According to the study printed in mbio, "We found that these rats are infected with bacterial pathogens known to cause acute or mild gastroenteritis in people, including atypical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, Clostridium difficile, and Salmonella enterica, as well as infectious agents that have been associated with undifferentiated febrile illnesses, including Bartonella spp., Streptobacillus moniliformis, Leptospira interrogans, and Seoul hantavirus."
The study continues, "We also identified a wide range of known and novel viruses from groups that contain important human pathogens, including sapoviruses, cardioviruses, kobuviruses, parechoviruses, rotaviruses, and hepaciviruses. The two novel hepaciviruses discovered in this study replicate in the liver of Norway rats and may have utility in establishing a small animal model of human hepatitis C virus infection. "
According to USA Today, Lipkin said rats may be the reason for unknown causes to diseases like hepatitis. Study co-author and associate research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Cadhla Firth said that rats leave behind saliva, urine and feces which ups the chance of contact with humans. For example, a New York pet owner could walk their dog and their pooch could bring the diseases in on their paws.
"New Yorkers are constantly exposed to rats and the pathogens they carry, perhaps more than any other animal," said Firth. "Despite this, we know very little about the impact they have on human health."
According to USA Today, Lipkin said, "Rats are sentinels for human disease. They're all over the city; uptown, downtown, underground. Everywhere they go, they collect microbes and amplify them. And because these animals live close to people, there is ample opportunity for exchange."
