Posted by Librarian on 4/6/2002, 9:26 pm

Considering that there is a possible identification of rotifer within the Romanian case study of collemboliasis, here is the only case of rotifers affecting human health that could be found in an internet search. It was found on the site linked below. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Can rotifers cause skin diseases in humans?   Within the past 4 years or so 2 people have asked me this question on separate occasions. The answer is no, they probably don’t. I am not aware of a human skin condition attributed to rotifers. Rotifers require to be surrounded by water to be active. Therefore, they cannot be active on the human skin no matter how high the humidity of the surrounding air is. And I think human sweat would be too salty for the freshwater species to survive in. In any case, if they caused any human illness somebody would have noticed them by now.   But now, lest I am accused of attempting to cover up a conspiracy of evil scientists, I must declare that there is indeed one report, not a full paper but an abstract of a work presented in a meeting, that attempted to associate bdelloid rotifers with a human illness. This was entitled “An Apparent Case of a Pathogenic Rotifer (Order Bdelloida [sic]) in Man [actually the patient was a woman!]”. The author was John Giesen of College of St. Thomas. It appeared as abstract No. 35 of the 9th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Parasitology (1933) in the Journal of Parasitology, vol. 20, p. 133 (1934). Here it is in its entirety:   “Recently two specimens of urine were sent to the writer from St. Mary’s Hospital Milwaukee, Wis., in which a considerable number of Rotifers [sic] of the order Bdelloida [sic] were found. Symptoms exhibited by patient were sore throat, pains in the joints which were migratory in nature affecting different joints successively, acute stomach disorders with vomiting of bile, spells of nervousness followed by weakness and exhaustion, semi-coma and a severe burning sensation around vagina. Blood counts showed an enormous increase in leucocytes.”   As far as I know, nothing else on this case was published. If anybody has more information about it, please let me (and the rest of the world) know. Again, my feeling is that if rotifers could cause such a severe illness in humans, I am sure we would already know more about it. Perhaps, a medical doctor can diagnose the patient’s illness from the listed symptoms after all these years.

Link: http://members.aol.com/aydinslibrary/IAQ.htm