Tularemia is a rare zoonotic disease caused by the bacteria Francisella Tularensis. The disease is recorded to affect approximately 200 people per year in the United States. Signs and symptoms of the disease include fever, rash, cough, high grade-fever, gastrointestinal complications, and more. The disease cannot be spread from human to human, and infection typically occurs through a vector such as wild game, a household pet, or a tick. However, humans can also be infected through handling infected materials and or consuming contaminated water. Due to the high virulence of the bacteria, those who come into contact with contaminated materials are nearly always going to develop tularemia.

We hope listeners will walk away from our podcast with a newfound knowledge of tularemia and how to keep themselves and loved ones safe from the disease. You'll find while listening that the take home message isn't that tularemia is the "killer" but instead why and how tularemia is the "killer."

Produced by Ashley Fakolujo, Baile Giovanoli and Giao Nguyen

These podcast episodes were created by members of the 2024 Spring Capstone course in the Human Biology and Society major at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics (https://socgen.ucla.edu/). The faculty sponsor is Christopher Kelty. For questions or concerns email ckelty@ucla.edu. For more information about any of these diseases please consult the US Centers for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/) .