Pet-Human Link Studied in Resistant Bacteria

NY Times ^ | March 22, 2006 | LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

[neverdem]

ATLANTA, March 21 — 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 did not want to sound too loud an alarm. But they 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.

On Tuesday, Dr. Rankin reported on S. aureus isolated from 38 animal cases at her hospital from 2002 through 2005. She said six of the cases "almost certainly were infected" at her hospital, the world's largest veterinary hospital. An additional 12 cases might have been infected there, she said.

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.

[neverdem]

ping

[vetvetdoug]

The veterinary community has dealt with antibiotic resistant organisms for a long time. Dr. Osborne from Minnesota has documented many antibiotic resistant cases with increasing frequency lately. It appears in one hypothesis that dogs and cats get fed some of the beef, chicken and pork that will not pass standards for antibiotic residue for human consumption and therefore get the bugs in their diet. Consequently, veterinarians have to deal with the resistant organisms in practice. I have encountered several cases of Pseudomas spp & Proteus spp. that were resistant to all antibiotics and had to resort to chelation.

[Oorang]

...dogs and cats get fed some of the beef, chicken and pork that will not pass standards...

Thanks for your information. I had no idea that some dog foods were that bad. It would seem obvious to me that if you care about your pet you don't buy the cheap dog food, I don't. But, given your post, what do you recommend? It seems that most vets push Science Diet, which does not seem like a good product to me. Any suggestions for keeping our furry family members healthy? Thanks.