Sleeping With Pets Can Be Infectious

Listen up pet lovers: Sleeping with the dog or cat might be hazardous to your health.  That's right--the midnight snuggle with Max-the-mutt just might cause you to get sick; so says a recent report being published in the upcoming issue of the public health journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

According to the report, domestic animals can carry a number of microorganisms like bacteria, parasites and viruses.  Yuck!  And these infectious agents can cause anything from mild to life-threatening illnesses.  Double yuck!

Two hundred and fifty zoonotic diseases that can be spread from animals to humans are known, and of those, more than 100 can be transmitted by domestic pets.  Although the risks are low compared to the numbers of people that sleep with their pets, scientists and veterinarians just want you to know the risks are still there.

"Having a pet in the bed is not a good idea," Bruno Chomel, report co-author and professor of zoonoses at University of California School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis said.

As I said earlier, the spectrum of diseases transmitted from pets to owners varies, but some of the more common ones are hookworm, ringworm, roundworm, cat scratch disease and drug-resistant staph infections, the report said.  One of the cases referred to was of a 69-year-old man who caught meningitis from his dog licking his hip-replacement wound all night as they laid in bed.  Puke-bucket, anyone?

Especially at risk are people with weakened immune systems--children under 5, the elderly, HIV+, cancer patients--but everybody can decrease their risk of catching zoonotic diseases by practicing a few good hygiene habits:

• Wash hands with soap and hot water after handling pets, especially puppies, kittens or any aged cat or dog with diarrhea.  Those "high-risk pets," Chomel says, are more likely to harbor an infection that could be passed to people.
• Immediately wash any area licked by a pet.
• Keep animals free of fleas and ticks, routinely de-worm them and have them regularly examined by a veterinarian
• The authors also discourage owners from kissing their cats or dogs and sharing a bed with them. 

Because most zoonotic infections are under-diagnosed or not reportable to health authorities, no one really knows how many cases occur each year.  One expert, Dr. Peter Rabinowitz of the Yale School of Medicine, believes the numbers are in the millions.  He says, "We think there are probably a lot of infections that happen and nobody really figures out that it came from the pet."

Before anybody gets all up in arms about this report (I know you pet-lovers...), consider this: Sleeping with Killer might be just as risky to his health as it is for yours.  Last year, a cat in Iowa was reported to have contracted H1N1 (swine flu) from his owner.  Unfortunately, pets don't have their infectious disease reporting down yet--so for now they suffer in silence.

Man's Best Preventative

Sorry cat lovers, but a dog in the home might just help prevent eczema in your child.  Yup, poochie prophylactics we call 'em, and a recent study shows that it might just do the trick, immunologically, to keep your kid from developing the itchy skin inflammation. 

The study, done in Cincinnati, found that children with a dog in the home at age 1 had a significantly reduced risk of eczema at age 4, but children who had a cat were more likely to have the ailment at the same age.  And get this, a dog in the child's home also seemed to protect against allergies to cats.  Woof, woof, woof...

Over 600 newborns were looked at, some testing positive for dog allergies (meaning they were allergic even though they had no symptom), some not.  Of those testing positive, the children's that did not live with a dog had four times the risk of getting eczema by age 4 than those who tested positive and did own a dog.  The higher the dog allergen levels were in the homes, the lower the risk was for the child developing eczema.

"It's speculative, but possible that the protective effect is due to a sort of natural immunotherapy where children who are exposed to dogs become tolerant over time in the same way that people on allergy shots develop tolerance to allergens," said study author Dr. Tolly Epstein, an assistant professor in the division of immunology, allergy and rheumatology at the University of Cincinnati Medical School.

Not all experts see the results as definitive, though.  Dr. Wanda Phipatanakul, an associate physician at Children's Hospital in Boston, contends that other research has shown conflicting results on the impact of cats and dogs on the development of eczema.

"The jury is still out," said Phipatanakul, who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "I don't think anyone, including the authors, is saying to go get a few dogs, or don't get a cat to reduce your risk."

True, but you've got to admit, the results are interesting.  Preliminary as they may be, with more studies surely on their way, these findings are encouraging.  If they turn out to be correct, then the results might just show a greater symbiosis between man and his best friend.