Pets can pass drug-resistant bus go owners: study

Berlin: You and your pet being healthy does not mean that there is no transmission of bugs. New research has found that healthy dogs could be passing bugs to their owners. And humans could be passing dangerous bugs to their pets.

Findings suggest that these microbes could be multi-drug resistant including antibiotics.

The study was held on over 2,800 hospital patients in Berlin and researchers think the risk of cross-infection is currently low. However, in 2019, antimicrobial-resistant infections caused almost 1.3 million deaths and were associated with nearly 5 million deaths around the world. Researchers were trying to establish how big the role of pets is in spreading these pathogens.

Dr Carolin Hackmann from Charité University Hospital told at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Copenhagen that the findings verified that the sharing of multidrug-resistant organisms between companion animals and their owners is possible.

The team collected swabs from 2,891 patients and their pets. Genetic sequencing was used to identify the species of bacteria and the presence of drug-resistant genes in them. 30% of the patients tested positive for MDROs. Among them, 11% had dogs and 9% had cats. In four cases alone the same antibiotic resistance was found in pets and their owners.

However, whole genome sequencing showed that only one of the matching pairs was genetically identical in a dog and its owner.

The team collected swabs from 2,891 patients and their pets.