CHICAGO (AP) Scientists who worry about the spread of nasty germs from animals to people have found the opposite can also happen: Cats and dogs catch bad things from their owners.
Canadian researchers documented 16 cases of dangerous, hard to treat staph infections in horses, cats and dogs. They believe that all of them probably began with owners or veterinarians infecting the animals.
The germ is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus called MRSA for short a microbe that until recently was seen only in hospitals, where it often spreads to elderly or especially ill people who have open wounds or tubes. Healthy people may carry it on their skin without getting sick.
"We've got some pretty strong evidence that owners were responsible for their companion animals developing MRSA soft tissue infections," said Dr. Donald E. Low, chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
Low presented the data at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
They found that the animals had resistant staph infections that were genetically similar to the ones that occur in people. In some cases, they showed that the animals got sick after their owners caught identical germs.
Such transmission is often difficult to prove, but Dr. Shelley Rankin, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes vets are seeing it more often in domestic animals.