You may not know it, but your pets can be detrimental to your health by transmitting bacteria that can cause drug resistance. Explanations.
With around 80 million registered pets, France is moving into third among countries in Europe with the most dogs and cats (Ifop). More than one in two households has at least one pet, 33% of cats against 25% of dogs, and the majority of French people aged 25 to 34. Even though they bring you a lot of love, pets can also be a source of trouble because they can transmit parasites or diseases, sometimes serious, such as rabies, leptospirosis or scabies and ringworm. Worse still, according to a German study, dogs and cats could transmit drug-resistant bacteria to you.
Indeed, the Charité University Hospital in Berlin analyzed 2,900 nasal swabs taken from patients and their animals over a long period, covering from June 2019 to September 2022. The results were unveiled in the spring during of the 33rd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases which took place in Copenhagen (Denmark).
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More than 1 million deaths in 2019
For Dr. Carolin Hackmann, who initiated this study, a trend emerges very clearly. “Our results confirm that the sharing of multi-resistant organisms (also called MDRO) between pets and their owners is possible” he says (The Guardian). According to him, MDROs resist very well to treatment with at least one antibiotic, which is nevertheless supposed to make them disappear. Near’one in three patients were found to be carriers of these organismsand 11% of them own a dog and 9% a cat.
In order to detect what type of bacteria it was, the scientists carried out genetic sequencing of those taken from said pets. No less than 300 samples were thus analyzed and then compared to the bacteria found on the patients. Actually 15% of dogs And 5% of cats tested positive for at least one MDRO. For Doctor Carolin Hackmann, “the level of sharing between hospitalized patients and their pets” is therefore “very weak”. But he adds that “carriers can spread bacteria in their environment for months“ : “They can be a source of infection for other more vulnerable people in the hospital, such as those with weak immune systems and very young or elderly people”. In other words, it is advisable to guard against it since these bacteria are despite everything responsible for 1.3 million deaths in 2019…
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