2 years of chest pain finally traced to feral pig meat

By Elizabeth Pratt | Fact-checked by Barbara Bekiesz

Published April 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

Industry Buzz

"It's rather extraordinary... This is not the first time this has happened, but it's stunningly rare, and I would call it a medical curiosity.” – William Schaffner, MD, infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University
“He recalled handling the raw meat and blood with bare hands before cooking and consuming it. This encounter likely served as his exposure to B. suis.” – CDC case report

A Florida man has been infected with a Brucella suis infection in his cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) after eating feral swine meat.^[] The man experienced chest pain for over a year before being diagnosed.

According to a CDC case report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the patient was admitted to the hospital multiple times for left chest induration, edema, and pain, starting in the spring of 2019.^[]

"Given our concern for the patient’s infection, we removed the [CIED]. We sent the device and pocket fluid to the Florida Department of Health and CDC for molecular testing."

— CDC case report

The medical history

The 77-year-old man lived on a farm in Florida and worked as a pastor. He had several outdoor dogs on the property who were reported to be in good health, and a handful of goats, though he did not interact with them. He did not hunt, eat products from the goats, or have bites or scratches from the animals.

The man had a medical history of controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus as well as hypertension, nonischemic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, and dyslipidemia. Notably, he had a surgical history of multiple automated cardiac devices and revisions.

Once B. suis was identified, the potential cause of the infection was then evaluated.

“We reviewed with the patient any potential exposures to feral swine. He confirmed no hunting activities but recalled receiving feral swine meat as a gift from a local hunter around 2017 on several occasions. He did not remember who specifically gave him the meat but recalled handling the raw meat and blood with bare hands before cooking and consuming it. This encounter likely served as his exposure to B. suis,” the report said.

Feral swine in the US

In the United States, feral swine is the typical cause of B. suis infection. In Florida, there are one million feral swine. ^[] But experts say the case of the 77-year-old in Florida is unique.

“It's rather extraordinary…. This is not the first time this has happened, but it's stunningly rare, and I would call it a medical curiosity," William Schaffner, MD, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University, tells MDLinx. "Good for him and good for the doctors who took care of him."

While the man was not a hunter, those who do hunt feral swine are most at risk for B. suis infection.

"If you're hunting any kind of wild game, whether it's feral swine or deer or anything else…use gloves, and better wear a mask so that you don't inhale things when you're stripping the skin off and creating an aerosol."

— William Schaffner, MD

“Those kinds of instructions through the hunting community and its literature have really reduced infections such as brucellosis, tularemia, and others that used to be so much more common among hunters in the United States,” Dr. Schaffner says.

As far as treatment? "Over the following year, he received multiple courses of antibiotics for culture-negative CIED infection, including 2 weeks of vancomycin and aztreonam, 2 weeks of daptomycin and aztreonam followed by 4 weeks of oral doxycycline and ciprofloxacin, and 2 weeks of daptomycin and ceftriaxone followed by suppression with oral doxycycline and cefdinir,” per the report.^[]