An Orthodontic Hat Trick, Ctd

On the subject of Luis Suárez, a reader writes, “The one thing you might want to mention is that human bites are very, very nasty”:

I’m a clinical pharmacist working in a big-city emergency department, and by far, the worst bite wounds and consequences we get in the emergency room are human bite wounds. The potential for infection with seriously awful bacteria is quite high. Eikenella Corrodens is the worst, and it causes infections almost exclusively from human bite wounds. When it gets into a joint (you see this in “clenched-fist injuries,” virtually always the result of someone hitting someone else in the mouth and lacerating their knuckles), it can especially cause lots of issues, including moving to the heart valves and causing endocarditis.  The infections from those bites are really tough to treat.

If it were me, I’d much rather be bitten by a dog or cat or any type of (non-rabid) animal than a human.

Physician Matt McCarthy elaborates on the many disgusting organisms living in your maw:

The pathogens that live in the mouth include common Staph and Streptococcus species, as well more obscure, yet potentially lethal bacteria like Eikenella, Fusobacterium, Peptostreptococcus, and Prevotella. You might not have heard of Eikenella, but at our hospital we see it quite frequently, typically as the causative agent of endocarditis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the heart. The bacteria can live harmlessly in the mouth, but if enough of it gets into the bloodstream, it can wreak havoc. There’s a good chance Luis Suárez has Eikenella living in his mouth—most of us do.

But wait, there’s more: Syphilis can also be transmitted via biting. The one case I know of occurred when a prostitute bit a 47-year-old man in the right nipple during sex. The nipple bled profusely, eventually became ulcerated, and failed to respond to several rounds of antibiotics. It was more than a month before doctors figured out it was syphilis. Not that anyone involved is known to be carrying around an STI—but would you want to explain how you caught syphilis from Luis Suárez?