ALARMING: Dogs and Cats are Sharing “Superbugs” with Owners!
United States: A recent study shows that pets such as dogs and cats can pass on to owners with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This has raised tremendous worries that this transmission from pets could also be an additional factor in the rise of this worldwide antibacterial resistance.
What have the recent findings suggest?
Superbugs are “more common” and “get passed” through both sick dogs and cats and their healthy owners in the UK and Portugal based on the findings of a study presented at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Global Congress in Barcelona.
The lead researcher of the study, Juliana Menezes, a doctoral student with the University of Lisbon’s Antibiotic Resistance Lab, said that the cases challenge “the traditional belief that humans are the main carriers of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in the community,” as US News reported.
Warning against the menace of antibiotic resistance
The World Health Organisation has warned of the human-world menace of antibiotic resistance as one of the most pressing health problems of humanity, it would seem from the researcher’s notes in background.
Currently, over 1.2 million people are diagnosed with infections that are resistant to medicine every year. Also, consultants said the number could become that high, or 10 million by 2050 which is estimated, but as of this writing no action has been taken yet.
More about the study
The study included 43 households in Portugal, which had humans, 38 dogs, and five cats, and in the UK households, which were 22 in number, had 56 humans and 22 dogs.
However, all the people were fine health-wise, but there were dogs in hopeless conditions with infections. Scientists compared bacterial cultures isolated from pet and owner feces and urine to animal skin samples and looked for bacteria resistant to antibiotics generally used by both parties.
According to the US News, researchers have discovered that five houses, which include both owners and their cats and dogs (one house with a cat and four with dogs), were found to be carrying bacteria resistant to cephalosporins, an antibiotic effective to human infections.
Next, genetic analysis showed that the strains of the bacteria were exactly the same, thus confirming that they were transferred from one to another.
More about the Cephalosporins drug
Cephalosporins are administered by doctors for various kinds of infections, including meningitis, pneumonia, and sepsis, investigators found out. Against this backdrop, the WHO considers them among the most important antibiotics for human use.
A similar scenario was detected with dogs bearing antibiotic resistant bacteria, in the carbapenem family as it is one of the last resort drugs in human medicine when no other antibiotics have worked.
Last but not least, all the 4-legged friends got the treatment they deserved and researchers have announced, that they have recovered.
Investigators said they couldn’t be certain of the transmission’s direction. On the contrary, 3 the Portguese houses were in the same order and let scientists understand that the germs were probably transmitted from pet to human.