Respiratory and Enteric Viruses in Man and Animals

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Abstract
It has become increasingly evident that overt disease in man and animals represents only a small part of the total picture of infection. This would suggest that man and animals and many of their parasites have had a long history of association in which an equilibrium has been established. If this is so, then it would seem that infections by the parasites of man and animals would tend to stay within the same species rather than change long-established patterns of behavior. However, man may become infected in contact with animal pathogens against which his past antigenic experience would ill serve him. This possibility is illustrated by Q fever infections of man. Rickettsial infections, at least in this country, are not common. It would appear that infection of cattle and sheep with Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, is an innocuous event even though the organisms multiply in large numbers in the placenta and other organs. This infection of animals would have gone unnoticed had not man, in contact with the animals, developed a very obvious, debilitating disease.