LAUSR

We were amused, as we are sure many others were, with the recent commentary by Wormser and Ladenheim [1] that puts forth various hypotheses pertaining to the extraordinary caloric intake and its impact, that may have been incurred by Santa Claus on Christmas Eve due to the very large number of cookies and possibly other food items left for him in return for his giftgiving efforts. Missing, however, in the article was any discussion on the likelihood that Santa would have shared a good portion of this food bonanza with his reindeer, in addition to the carrots left by people in the United States, especially given the amount of work involved in transporting Santa to so many households. This would have lowered considerably the estimated 8.9 billion calories that would have exceeded Santa’s usual daily requirement by 2.7 million-fold [1]. Rather than comment further on Santa’s and/or his reindeers’ nutritional needs, we would like instead to point out two important clinically-related issues, not covered by the Wormser and Ladenheim paper that would be associated with the possible acquisition of certain serious diseases. The first concern pertains to the reindeer who could serve as unwitting carriers of ticks that carry certain transmissible pathogens. Reindeer, which are also known as caribou, are a species of deer and are known to inhabit circumpolar and polar