An Alaska doctor has documented the first case of a rare and potentially risky infection from contact with a brown bear. The infection is known as “seal finger” and people typically get it handling seals, especially during seal hunting and processing. Veterinarians and wildlife biologists are also at risk.
But in 2024, Dr. Benjamin Westley diagnosed the case in a man who had cut his hand skinning a brown bear hunted on the Alaska Peninsula. He’d had three days of redness and painful swelling that didn’t resolve with standard antibiotics.
Westley said early tests didn’t find anything definitive, so eventually he sent a tissue sample to a lab for more comprehensive analysis.
“What was particularly shocking about this patient was he had a finger infection after skinning a brown bear that was not responding properly to antibiotics,” Westley said. “But I did not expect this bacteria.”
Seal finger is not uncommon in Alaska and circumpolar regions, but Westley said this is only the second time this potentially more serious strain of the infection has been identified in the state.
He diagnosed the first case too, in a patient whose finger infection had spread to his hip.
“When the report came back, I was shocked, because the first case was my own patient 10 years prior,” he said. “And now it was the exact same bacteria for the second time in Alaska, but from a brown bear exposure, not from a seal exposure.”
The infection only spreads through direct or indirect animal contact. Other cases outside the state have been tied to a polar bear and a domestic cat. Scientists don’t know if those animals caused the infection because they’d had contact with a seal or through other means.
In this case, the patient was initially treated with the wrong type of antibiotics, which allowed the infection to worsen and ultimately caused dead tissue, a damaged tendon and a bone infection. The patient recovered but still has lingering finger stiffness.
Seal finger is often misdiagnosed, and a delay in treatment can cause serious problems. Westley urges health care providers to consider treating patients for seal finger if they have an infection and had contact with seals, bears or cats, even before getting bacterial test results.
Westley said Alaskans can also protect themselves when hunting and processing seals or bears.
“Try not to get injured through the skin, cut, or let bacteria from an animal you're working with into the tissue, because that can result in all manner of weird infections that can be hard for doctors to sort out,” Westley said.
He also recommends washing hands with soap and quickly cleaning any wound.
