Pet-Human Connections in Antibiotic Resistance
Antibiotic resistance has long been an important human health problem. But now it is also showing up in a small but growing number of pets in this country, Canada and Europe, scientists and federal health officials said on Tuesday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases here.
The health officials said they wanted to learn more about the problem that has developed involving the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of staphylococcal infections among people.
The same genetic strains of S. aureus have been found among human and animal cases, suggesting a connection.
Dr. Nina Morano, an official of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here, said at a news conference that the problem was serious enough that her agency was adding questions about exposure to dogs, cats and other pets in large studies intended to determine their role in human staphylococcal infections.
Dr. Shelley C. Rankin, a microbiologist at the Ryan Veterinary Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, said she suspected that the frequency of disease transfer between pets and humans was extremely low, far less than 1 percent.
After S. aureus among humans developed resistance to penicillin many years ago, doctors prescribed another antibiotic, methicillin. But S. aureus infections soon became resistant to methicillin.
Now methicillin-resistant staphylococcal infections lead to more than 125,000 hospitalizations a year in the United States, epidemiologists at the centers have reported.
The bacteria can cause the same variety of problems in animals and humans, including skin infections, abscesses, joint infections and death. The infections can be difficult to treat, raising concern about the potential for animals to serve as sources of infection among their human contacts.
The questions that epidemiologists at the centers are adding to continuing studies are aimed at determining the source of such infections. Are some people acquiring the antibiotic-resistant staphylococcal infections from pets? Or are pets being infected from exposure to people? If so, how often are each occurring?
In either case, the staphylococcal bacteria may be cycling among humans and pets.
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