Zoonotic: Pertaining to a zoonosis: a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people or, more specifically, a disease that normally exists in animals but that can infect humans. There are multitudes of zoonotic diseases.
Some examples include:
- anthrax
- ascariasis
- brucellosis
- plague
- echinococcosis
- Lassa fever
- listeriosis
- Lyme disease
- monkeypox
- psittacosis
- rabies
- salmonellosis
- trichinosis
- toxoplasmosis
- typhus and
- West Nile fever
Zoonoses may appear suddenly and be relatively virulent, as illustrated by HIV which ignited the AIDS epidemic and the coronavirus responsible for the outbreak of SARS.
Last Editorial Review: 5/13/2016
