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Q Fever (Coxiella burnetii)

A Blueprint for Outbreaks That Some Humans will Remember Long

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Zoonoses: Infections Affecting Humans and Animals

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Abstract

About 85 years ago, Q fever research began due to human outbreaks of unknown origin, associated with domestic animals. Since then, some but not all characteristics of this “query” disease, caused by the intracellular bacterium Coxiella burnetii, were revealed. In this chapter, the bacteriology of the bacterium, clinical presentation, epidemiology, and transmission of the disease in humans and animals are presented. Domestic small ruminants are the main source of human Q fever. Although Q fever is considered to be an occupational disease, outbreaks affect also people without livestock contact and as such have a major public health impact attracting most attention. The Dutch Q fever outbreak, involving 4000 reported human cases over the years 2007–2010 and at least 40,000 cases presumably unrecognized, is an example of how Q fever can reemerge from an endemic state into an outbreak of unforeseen dimension. In this outbreak, the epidemiological link between dairy goats and human cases was confirmed by genotyping for the first time. This was possible due to the previous development of genotyping assays that are applicable on clinical material. Although Q fever seems to be a blue print for outbreaks, it is not known yet what factors are essential to cause outbreaks and how they interact. To prevent outbreaks, a better understanding of these factors and their interaction is necessary and research should therefore focus on this. Only with a One Health approach involving human medicine, veterinary medicine, and environmental factors, coordinated research under this aspect and up-to-date knowledge and information processing, presentation, and dissemination will be able to reduce the significance of this zoonosis in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Animal supply chain and Animal Welfare, Ministy of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Hendrik I. J. Roest

  2. Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Hendrik I. J. Roest

  3. Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud Q fever Center of Expertise, Radboud Center for Infectious Diseases, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Chantal P. Rovers

  4. Bundeswehr Medical Service Headquarters VI-2, Medical Intelligence & Information (MI2), Munich, Germany

    Dimitrios Frangoulidis

Authors
  1. Hendrik I. J. Roest
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  2. Chantal P. Rovers
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  3. Dimitrios Frangoulidis
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Correspondence to Hendrik I. J. Roest or Dimitrios Frangoulidis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Infectiology, Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, Oberschleißheim, Bayern, Germany

    Andreas Sing

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Roest, H.I.J., Rovers, C.P., Frangoulidis, D. (2023). Q Fever (Coxiella burnetii). In: Sing, A. (eds) Zoonoses: Infections Affecting Humans and Animals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85877-3_12-1

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