Question:medium
Regarding leptospirosis, which of the following is TRUE?
Regarding leptospirosis, which of the following is TRUE?
Show Hint
Eliminate the wrong drug, the wrong route, and human-to-human spread first.
Updated On: Jun 24, 2026
- Rats are the only reservoir
- Fluoroquinolones are the drug of choice
- Person-to-person transmission occurs commonly
- Oro-fecal transmission is the main route
Show Solution
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Approach this by testing each statement against the known biology of $Leptospira$.
Start with treatment. The recommended agents are penicillin (for severe, hospitalised disease) and doxycycline (for mild disease and chemoprophylaxis). Fluoroquinolones are not the drug of choice, so the fluoroquinolone statement is incorrect.
Next, transmission. Leptospirosis is a classic zoonosis. People get infected when broken skin or mucous membranes contact water, mud, or animal urine carrying the organism. It is not spread mouth-to-gut like typhoid, so the oro-fecal claim is wrong. It is also not spread readily between people, since humans are accidental hosts at the end of the chain, so the person-to-person claim is wrong as well.
That leaves the reservoir statement. Rodents are the principal maintenance hosts that shed the organism in urine and seed the environment. The wording overstates it slightly by saying only rats, but compared with the three plainly false options it is the statement the examiner marked correct.
Therefore the accepted true statement concerns the rodent reservoir.
\[\boxed{\text{Rats are the reservoir}}\]
Start with treatment. The recommended agents are penicillin (for severe, hospitalised disease) and doxycycline (for mild disease and chemoprophylaxis). Fluoroquinolones are not the drug of choice, so the fluoroquinolone statement is incorrect.
Next, transmission. Leptospirosis is a classic zoonosis. People get infected when broken skin or mucous membranes contact water, mud, or animal urine carrying the organism. It is not spread mouth-to-gut like typhoid, so the oro-fecal claim is wrong. It is also not spread readily between people, since humans are accidental hosts at the end of the chain, so the person-to-person claim is wrong as well.
That leaves the reservoir statement. Rodents are the principal maintenance hosts that shed the organism in urine and seed the environment. The wording overstates it slightly by saying only rats, but compared with the three plainly false options it is the statement the examiner marked correct.
Therefore the accepted true statement concerns the rodent reservoir.
\[\boxed{\text{Rats are the reservoir}}\]
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