Variable pet bite advice
It seems like pet bite articles come in waves, with a recent cluster showing the variable quality in advice that's available.
Often, they are holiday "filler" articles that provide some basic useful information but overall are of limited use or even harmful based on their very superficial approach. They often mention rabies, get a quick quote from a veterinarian or someone in public health, but don't emphasize the potential problems that can occur with even apparently minor bites. The thing that often raises my ire is the common statement about watching the bite and going to a doctor if your limb swells up or has pus oozing out, without talking about the need for proper post-bite care to actually prevent that from happening.
Anyway, I came across a couple of better articles recently, that get some good information across in a nice, readable manner. One, an article in "The Herald News" entitled "Cat bites always require check by doctor", gets a very important point across quickly.
The news story details the saga of the PJ, a 13-year-old cat, and his owner. PJ bit the woman on the arm causing a seemingly minor wound, but by the next day, her arm was red and swollen, necessitating a round of intravenous antibiotics and four days in hospital. In the article, Gail Steele, an infection prevention nurse, states "Cat bites.. must always be considered medical emergencies. This is especially true when they occur in the hand because that area has a richer blood supply...Their sharp little teeth are like little needles, and they inject bacteria right into soft tissue..."
This is a pretty extreme example of what can happen after a cat bite, but it's far from rare. It's not really clear whether this person's infection would have been prevented with normal practices. Bites over certain sites, like the hand, foot, joints, tendon sheaths and prosthetic devices, and bites to young kids, elderly individuals and people with compromised immune systems typically require prophylactic antibiotics.
If this was actually a bite over the arm, as reported, antibiotics might not have been given, even though cat bites are much higher risk for infection than dog bites. However, the key is that bites should be assessed so proper determination can be made about the need for antibiotics. All infections won't be prevented but appropriate medical care should reduce the risk and also allow for adequate consideration of whether rabies exposure might be a concern.
There's a sad end to this article, as PJ bit his owner again a few months later. The bite was over the shin and, given her previous problems, antibiotics were provided. However, the owner still ended up with an abscess that required surgical intervention and took months to heal. (Whether this person has really bad luck, whether PJ has a particularly bad mix of bugs in his mouth or whether the owner has an unidentified problem with her immune system is unclear, but back-to-back severe infections is a major issue, especially with a cat that is prone to biting.) The woman's daughter ended up taking PJ home with her, but after another unprovoked bite, he was euthanized.
Cat bites aren't always this bad, and in fact, most don't result in complications. However, that's not to downplay the potential problems. When you consider how often cats bite, how often cat bites are not properly cared for because they appear to be minor, and the ability of a cat bite to inoculate bacteria deep into the tissues, it's easy to see how bad things can happen. Reducing the risk of cat bite infections involves a few basic steps:
- Reducing bites. Good handling and training (of both cats and people) can reduce the likelihood of bites. This is particularly important with kids, who may be bitten through rough or excessive handling of a cat.
- Bite first aid. Prompt cleaning of the wound can reduce bacterial contamination. Thorough cleaning with soap and water can have a big impact on the likelihood of infection.
- Medical care. Bites over certain sites or to certain individuals (see above) almost always require antibiotics. There's less consensus over other types of bites, but getting medical care is a good idea in any case to determine if there are any factors that indicate a need for antibiotics.
- Rabies avoidance. Every bite should be reported to public health so the rabies aspect can be covered. The biting animal needs to be identified and observed for 10 days. If it's healthy after 10 days, it couldn't have been shedding rabies virus. If the biting animal cannot be identified, it's likely that post-exposure treatment for rabies will be required.
More snake smuggling
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I avoided the "snakes on a plane" title, as ever since the (bad) Samuel L. Jackson movie came out, every reptile smuggling headline seems to use use it. Regardless, would you like to be on a long trans-Atlantic flight with 247 smuggled animals, including a collection of venomous vipers? Probably not.
Fortunately for passengers on a flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid in early December, security screeners took note of the "organic substances moving inside" Karel Abelovsky's baggage. Inside, they found over 200 reptiles and mollusks, including 15 venomous vipers. Among these were two yararas (Bothrops jararaca), a viper that can grow up to 160 cm (~5 ft) in length, and which is a common cause of snakebites in some regions. Two of the animals were dead by the time they were found. Probably many (or most) of the others would have died during transit.
Animal smuggling is a big problem for many reasons:
- It's an major animal welfare issue, since it is reasonable to suspect that only a small minority of smuggled animals survive the process, and even fewer thrive in their new homes.
- Smuggling of endangered species can threaten survival of some species in the wild.
- Smuggling of venomous or otherwise dangerous species can put people at risk. This includes people that purposefully buy dangerous animals but can't handle them, people who buy them not knowing they are dangerous, people at various points of the smuggling process (e.g. security screeners) that might come across the animals, and the general public who can be exposed if the animal escapes.
- Moving animals between regions always carries some risk of bringing along infectious diseases. The less control, the greater the risk.
Mr. Abelovsky has been changed with smuggling and faces up to 10 years in prison, but typically people get off with minimal punishment. Weak enforcement and the potentially lucrative nature of smuggling means that it's going to continue until the problem gets taken more seriously, both in terms of investigation and charging of other people in the process (e.g. where did he get the animals, who was he working with, where were they going to go?) and application of penalties that are severe enough to discourage people.
Unfortunately, while an incident like this gets a lot of attention, it just represents the miniscule minority of smugglers that actually get caught.
Do surgeons have too much time on their hands?
Sometimes poor quality papers get published, like the one I wrote about yesterday. Other times, published studies have no impact on science… and occasionally, that’s done on purpose. Two recent studies highlight the latter group and show that, while surgeons may have too much time on their hands, some at least have a sense of humour.
A "groundbreaking" study by Dr. Denis Verwilghen and friends was just published in the Veterinary Record, entitled “Investigation of the best suture pattern to close a stuffed Christmas turkey”. Their randomized trial involved assessing skin disruption scores and the cosmetic appearance of 15 stuffed turkeys that were closed with one of five different methods. Their conclusions: Before cooking, both the Utrecht suture pattern and surgical staples provided the best cosmetic result. However, after cooking and removal of the suture or staples, the skin only remained intact in the surgical staple group. Surgical staples are also a lot easier and quicker to place, so if you have a surgical stapler on hand, pull it out for your Christmas turkey. Beware though: the authors made sure to remind everyone that skin staples are not digestible. Maybe we need a surgical checklist for turkey preparation that requires the cook to record the number of staples that go in and are later taken out.
There was also a study published in the British Medical Journal (Subramanian et al, 2011) entitled "Orthopedic surgeons: as strong as an ox and almost twice as clever? Multicentre prospective comparative study." This authors investigated the standard claim that orthopedic surgeons are "strong as an ox but half as smart." The study (conducted by surgeons, so I have to wonder if they made up some of the data) involved comparing dominant hand grip strength and intelligence test scores of orthopedic surgeons and anesthetists. The end result? Orthopedic surgeons have a higher mean intelligence score and higher mean grip strength.
There are 3 possible explanations:
- Surgeons really are smarter than we think. That may not be an acceptable answer since, as an internist, I’d have to make up a new series of surgeon jokes.
- Anesthetists were a bad control group. The surgeons may have feared going up against their internal medicine counterparts, and therefore decided to compare themselves to the anesthetists instead.
- They lied. Although, if they really are only half as bright as an ox, they must have had help.
Pasteurella bone infection from dogs?
A paper in the journal Orthopedics (Machino et al 2011) describes the case of a 52-year-old man with an infection in the vertebrae of his neck caused by Pasteurella haemolytica. This bacterium (which was renamed Mannheimia haemolytica quite a while ago... I guess their laboratory is a bit behind the times) is most often associated with respiratory disease in cattle. In this case, "because the patient owned 2 dogs and frequently kissed them on the mouth, the cause of infection was thought to be excessive contract with pet dogs."
It's possible, but I have some issues with this.
- Despite the assertion in the paper that this bacterium is a resident in the mouth of dogs and cats, I don't know of much or any evidence supporting this. A different but related bacterium, Pasteurella multocida, is commonly found in the mouths of healthy dogs and cats, but it's not the one that caused disease here. The authors state that Pasteurella haemolytica can be found in 71-90% of cats and 21-60% of dogs, yet the papers they cite didn't actually find P. haemolytica, they found other Pasteurella.
- The authors also state that the recent increase in pet ownership has caused an increase in P. haeamolytica infections from bite wounds, with absolutely no evidence supporting either an increase in infections caused by this bacterium or any role of pets.
- This paper takes the typical medical journal approach of blaming the pet with no effort whatsoever to find out if the pet was really involved. Would it have killed them to get some oral samples from the dogs for culture, to see if they could actually find the same bacterium?
It's disappointing, but not surprising, to see reports like this. It shows a lack of critical thought about the potential role of pets, a lack of care when writing the report, and a weak peer review process for the journal.
Zoonotic diseases are an important issue. However, we need to focus our efforts on real problems, not bad science. This article is so weak and error-filled that it should be retracted, but it's unlikely anything will happen. I'll write a Letter to the Editor, which, based on my limited previous experience in questioning poor zoonotic disease science in human medical journals, will likely be ignored. Well, we'll see.
Horse rabies in Florida
Marion County (Florida) public health personnel recently issued a rabies alert after a horse in the area tested positive for the virus. It’s a standard alert, emphasizing avoiding contact with wildlife, reducing things that attract wildlife to houses (e.g. accessible pet food or garbage) and recommending vaccination. Interestingly, while this alert was prompted by a case of rabies in a horse, it only mentions vaccination of dogs, cats and ferrets. That may have been because it was an off-the-shelf alert, not really tailored to this situation, but it shows how horses can be overlooked when it comes to rabies.
Fortunately, rabies is a rare disease in horses. In 2010, there were 37 reported cases of equine rabies in the US and only one in Canada (two Canadian cases have been identified so far this year). That’s a very low rate, especially considering the number of horses out there, but it’s still more cases than there should be for a very serious yet highly preventable disease.
Unfortunately, rarity sometimes breeds complacency, so despite the fact that rabies is invariably fatal in horses and rabid horses pose a risk to people, vaccination of horses is often overlooked. While rabies is rare in horses, rabies vaccination shouldn’t be rare. Every horse in a rabies endemic region (or that might be traveling to such a region) should be vaccinated against rabies. It’s cheap insurance against a very dangerous and deadly disease.
Human rabies in South Carolina
A South Carolina woman has been identified as the first case of human rabies in the state in the past 50 years. Very little information has been released, including whether or not she is still alive. Unfortunately, the odds are quite low that she survived. Successful treatment of a Wisconsin girl in 2004 using a radical new protocol was accompanied by much optimism for treatment of this disease, which at the time was described as invariably fatal. While a few other survivors have been reported, rabies is now often referred to as almost invariably fatal, since the protocol has not been the panacea that it was hoped to be, and death is still the typical outcome.
In the latest case, exposure to a bat in the home a few months earlier was the suspected source of infection. This is a common source of exposure and a typical time frame. Few details are presented, so it's not clear whether the woman was known to have been bitten by the bat or whether that's suspected for some other reason (such as lack of other possible sources).
This is another indication of the care that needs to be taken around bats. While human rabies is fortunately very rare in Canada and the US (it causes tens of thousands of deaths each year worldwide, mainly from dogs in a few developing countries), bats are an important source of exposure. Any encounter with a bat needs to be accompanied by a determination of whether there is a risk of rabies exposure. Anyone bitten by a bat should try to make sure the bat is caught and tested for rabies, because otherwise there's no way to prove it wasn't rabid, and post-exposure treatment would be indicated.
Image: Bat bites can be very dangerous, because they carry the risk of rabies transmission, but they can be so small that they may not even be detected. (Image source: http://agrilife.org/batsinschools/responding-to-a-bat-bite/)
Pigeon fever in Louisiana horses
Pigeon fever is an equine disease that doesn't have anything to do with pigeons. It's an infection caused by the bacterium Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis which results in the formation of abscesses, usually along the chest (pectoral region) and lowest part of the abdomen. The name "pigeon fever" comes from the swelling in the chest region that vaguely resembles a pigeon-breast. A recent report describes and outbreak of pigeon fever involving at least 30 horses in Louisiana, bringing the estimated number of cases in the state in 2011 to over 100.
Pigeon fever is a regionally (and to a lesser degree seasonally) variable disease. It predominantly occurs in California, but over recent years it has expanded its range in the western US, and from this report, it's obvious that it has a good foothold in some other areas in the south east as well.
Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis lives in the soil, and causes infections in horses when it gets inoculated under the skin via wounds and perhaps sometimes through fly bites. Once it gets into the tissues, it starts to grow and causes painful (and potentially large) abscesses that often need to be surgically incised in order to drain them.
Infection control practices on farms can help reduce transmission of the bacterium between horses and to reduce the risk of injuries. These include:
- Quarantine of new arrivals and careful inspection for sign of infection.
- Isolation of known infected horses.
- Use of "contact precautions" when dealing with infected horses to prevent transmission of the bacterium via peoples' bodies or clothing. This involves the use of protective outwear (e.g. coveralls and boots that are only used for the infected horse(s)) and gloves.
- Proper use of handwashing / hand sanitizer by people handling infected horses (or any horses, really, from a broader standpoint).
- Prevention of cross-use of items like buckets between infected/quarantined horses and the general horse population.
- Use of fly repellent, especially on horses with open wounds or draining abscesses.
- Careful cleaning and disinfection of areas potentially contaminated by pus from draining abscesses.
- Inspection of stalls, paddocks and fields for things that could cause wounds that might subsequently become infected.
Pigeon fever is a good example of why it's important to know disease patterns in your region (and those to where your horses travel). Being aware of the possibility of a specific disease is an important step in diagnosis, and knowing there is disease activity in any area in which your horse may have been is a key part of that. This disease is also an example of why we need ongoing disease surveillance and reporting, because if a disease makes it into new regions, veterinarians and horse owners need to know about that as soon as possible to allow for quicker diagnosis and use of control measures. Unfortunately, organized disease surveillance and communication is sorely lacking in horses.
Photo: A Jiennense Pouter Pigeon, which has a very pronounced breast compared to other breeds. The swelling of a horse's pectoral region due to abscesses caused by C. pseudotuberculosis is the reason the disease is sometimes called "pigeon fever." (click image for source)
Dumb and dumber get campy
The focus of this blog is companion animals, but sometimes I just can't resist commenting on other areas, and this one's too good to pass up.
Today's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, published by the CDC, describes Campylobacter jejuni infection in two men. Campylobacter is a zoonotic bacterium that causes diarrhea (and sometime severe complications) in people after it's ingested. It's usually a foodborne disease, but any method that leads to the bacterium reaching the mouth and being swallowed can result in to infection. This report describes a rather unusual method of infection.
This summer, the Wyoming Department of Health investigated two cases of C. jejuni infection. Both people worked on a local sheep ranch and got sick at the same time. Both had typical campylobacteriosis disease with diarrhea, cramps, fever, nausea and vomiting. One was hospitalized but both recovered. The interesting part is how they got infected. It turns out the men were involved in a multiday "event" to castrate and dock tails of 1600 lambs. Ten other people were also involved and they didn't get sick. The difference between these two and the other ten? The two infected men used their teeth to castrate some of the lambs. Animal welfare issues aside, this is just stupid. (I doubt anyone's looking at this but these idiots shouldn't be allowed to care for animals.) I don't see how anyone with an iota of common sense wouldn't think this is a bad idea in the current day and age. A very long time ago, apparently the "bit and spit" technique of castrating lambs (see photo, click for source) was relatively common practice. But like so many things that people used to do, there are much better (and safer, and infinitely more hygienic) ways of doing this nowadays.
Hopefully, they learned their lesson. Additionally, hopefully the farm owner takes some responsibility to make sure their personnel don't act like idiots and that someone investigates the animal cruelty aspect.
Photo: In "the old days" during castration of lambs, after opening the scrotal sac with a sharp blade, the testicles were often removed using the teeth, because it was faster than attempting to do so with an instrument. This technique is (almost) no longer practiced (except for at least two men in Wyoming, apparently). Photo source: http://old-photos.blogspot.com (used with permission)
Cats as dinner guests
To each his own, I guess. Today's Toronto Star has an article on the front page of the Life section about the Shine family and their rather close dining relationship with their four cats.
Among some of the highlights:
One of the front page pictures shows one of the cats standing on the counter while food is being prepared.
- Would you want your cat to sit on your food before you ate it? Probably not. Would you lick the cat's feet after it got out of the litter box? Doubt it. By letting the cat sit on the food preparation area, aren't they essentially doing the same thing?
The cats' food and water bowls are on the kitchen counter.
- Feeding pets in the kitchen was a risk factor in a Salmonella outbreak linked to contaminated pet food (Behravesh et al. 2010). That's just feeding them in the kitchen, let alone on the counters.
The other front page picture shows a different cat licking dinner rolls before they are being served. "I'll eat that one" declares the husband, an anesthesiologist (to check out the photo gallery, click here)
- This maybe has a greater "ick factor" for most people, but in reality is probably much lower risk than the first two issues.
Yet another picture (slow news day?) shows a cat stretched out on the dining room table while the rest of the family eats.
As I said above, to each their own. People can make their own decisions about how to interact with animals. It doesn't seem like there are any young children (who are subjected to their parents decisions) to worry about in the household. However, it's unclear whether there might be any other high risk persons in the household to be worried about. Mrs. Shine has diabetes, and that can be associated with effects on the immune system. Further, what about other people that visit the house (or come over for dinner)? Are any of them high-risk individuals, and do they know about the potential risks? Who knows? (The Shine's say they don't have people over for dinner often.)
What's the real risk? It's hard to say. It's probably low but we know:
- people can get infections from cats
- many of the infections that people get from cats are acquired by ingesting microorganisms from these animals
- certain types of pet management (e.g. feeding them in the kitchen) have been associated with higher risk of infection
I'm all for close contact with pets and making them part of the family. If my cat jumps up on the dining room table during the day, I don't panic and try to sterilize it (the table, that is). However, I try to maintain a balance between having my pets as part of the family and not having their microorganisms as part of my family.
There are much worse things that you can do with your pets than are demonstrated here, but I can't believe that it doesn't increase the risk of disease. Maybe for this family, they are willing to accept an increased degree of risk for the benefits they perceive. Unfortunately, I doubt they have really thought about the potential infectious diseases issues or talked to someone about them, to let them make a truly informed decision. (Perhaps (hopefully) their other daughter, who is currently attending vet school overseas, will be able to provide them with some more information on this topic when she gets home!)
Dog rescue issues
The Toronto Star has an article describing the efforts of Naz Sayani to bring home a group of street dogs from India. As an animal lover, she was touched by the number of stray dogs roaming around New Delhi while accompanying her daughter to India for medical treatment. She borrowed a car and started driving around the city dropping off food for strays.
- This is a high-risk activity for rabies exposure. Rabies is very common in India and contact with strays is a prime source of human infection. Ideally, anyone working with strays should be vaccinated against rabies. At a minimum, they should be aware of the risk and be ready to get post-exposure treatment if exposed (possibly through a quick trip out of the country, since knowledge about rabies prevention and access to rabies post-exposure treatment is variable in India).
A pregnant stray dog caught Naz's eye, and after hearing about people threatening or abusing the dog (and later her and her pups), she tried unsuccessfully to find them homes. Eventually, she made the decision to bring them to Canada, in order to try to find homes for them here.
I can certainly see how this would happen, as it's easy for people to get attached to a friendly, needy animal. It's also hard to balance a case-based scenario like this, when someone has an attachment to a specific animal, with the bigger picture of animal rescues, and all the associated pros and cons.
I get a surprising number of advice calls and emails from people "rescuing" dogs from various places.
- The typical questions goes something like "I am organizing a rescue of a group of dogs from [insert one of many central or southern US states here] and want to know if there are any infectious disease issues I have to worry about".
- Worse are the calls that go "I just got some rescue dogs from [wherever] and now my other dogs are sick. What might be going on?"
People that are rescuing dogs usually do it because they have big hearts. Some people like the "status" that they see attached to certain rescue dogs ("You have a new Mercedes? Well I have a new Hurricane Katrina rescue dog"). My problem with international rescue efforts is the question of a) whether it's a good use of resources and b) whether it poses unnecessary infectious disease risks to people and other animals.
Resources
- Organizing rescues, fulfilling regulatory rules, shipping dogs and finding them homes takes a lot of money. It would make more sense if there was a shortage of adoptable strays in Ontario. However, I haven't heard any shelter personnel lament their lack of dogs, undercrowded facilities or excessive financial resources.
Diseases
- Moving animals between different regions carries an inherent risk of transmission of infectious diseases. The more movement, the more mixing and the greater the difference in infectious diseases in the areas, the greater the risk of making more animals sick, and potentially doing more harm than good.
- Rabies is one concern, and rabid dogs have been imported into North America in the past. Since rabies has a long incubation period, it's hard to be certain that a dog's not incubating a rabies infection.
- More likely to be imported would be a wide range of other bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. These are a concern from several standpoints. Some might cause disease in the imported animal, and diagnosis may be delayed or missed because of it being a disease with which local veterinarians have no experience. Some might bring an unusual pathogen into the area that could be spread to a few other in-contact dogs. Worse, some might bring in a new pathogen that could then establish itself in the local (or national) dog population. We don't know how often any of these scenarios occur, but they are always a risk, and need to be part of the cost-benefit analysis of animal rescue operations and associated animal importation.
At the end of the day, it's hard for me to support rescuing dogs from other regions when we already have a large population of dogs in our own shelters and animal being euthanized here because there are no homes for them. I can't justify the expense and risk of importing dogs if, for every new dog imported, one other dog in a local shelter gets euthanized because it doesn't have a home. Does importation really mean fewer adoptions here? We don't know, but it stands to reason.
A situation like this is a little different, as a chance and presumably (hopefully) one-time event prompted by a specific human-animal bond. Overall though, we could do better for the dog populations both here and in regions where there are massive stray problems by focusing attention on better care and adoption here, and international programs aimed at helping stray populations abroad through vaccination, education and sterilization efforts.
Staph schleiferi in dogs
Staphylococcus schleiferi doesn't get much respect. Most of the attention gets paid to Staphylococcus aureus (because MRSA, the methicillin-resistant version, is such a high profile pathogen in humans and it can be transmitted between people and pets) and S. pseudintermedius (because it's a leading cause of infection and MRSP, the methicillin-resistant type, is spreading very quickly and widely in dogs).
Staphylococcus schleiferi is another Staphylococcus species that can cause various infections in dogs, particularly skin and ear infections. It's often overlooked, or more specifically, unnoticed. The problem is it takes some effort to differentiate it from other staph. This species is relatively unique in that it has two distinct subtypes - S. schleiferi coagulans and S. schleiferi schleiferi. The first one is very similar to S. pseudintermedius, and not all diagnostic labs go through the trouble of trying to distinguish one from the other. So there may actually be a lot of S. schleiferi infections that get mistakenly diagnosed as S. pseudintermedius. The second subtype is coagulase-negative (whereas S. pseudintermidius, S. aureus the first subtype of S. schleiferi are all coagulase-positive) and most diagnostic labs don't do any identification of coagulase negative staph. As a result, we only have a superficial understanding of it and its epidemiology.
A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania (Cain et al., J Am Vet Med Assoc 2011) that looked at 225 dogs with S. schleiferi infections has provided some insight into this perhaps not-so-unusual bug. Some highlights:
Ear infections and skin infections accounted for 87% of cases.
- That's expected, since these are very common types of infections for any kind of staph.
Allergic skin disease was the most common underlying disease.
- That's also not surprising. Most staph infections occur secondary to some underlying problem or procedure (e.g. surgery). This shows the importance of taking the time and effort to diagnoses and control allergic skin disease, in order to help prevent infections before they occur.
57% of S. schleiferi isolates were methicillin-resistant.
- Ugh! I'm not very surprised but it's scary how often we see methicillin-resistance in some staphylococci, because of the complications it can cause with treatment. Methicillin-resistant staph infections can be hard to treat because there may be few effective antimicrobials available.
Methicillin-resistance was more common in the coagulase negative subspecies, S. schleiferi schleiferi.
- It's hard to say whether this means a lot from a clinical standpoint. In generally, coagulase negative staph are much less of a concern than the coagulase positive staph since they are less likely to cause disease. However, we don't really understand the differences between the two S. schleiferi's. If the coagulase-negative version is less able to cause disease, then a lower rate of methicillin resistance in the more concerning coagulase positive type is better than vice versa, but I'm not sure we have enough evidence to say much about this at the moment.
Treatment with a penicillin (e.g. amoxicillin), first generation cephalosporin (e.g. cephalexin) or 3rd generation cephalosporin within the preceding 30 days was associated with having methicillin-resistant S. schleiferi.
- That's not surprising and is one more piece of evidence that "routine" use of antibiotics can contribute to selection for methicillin-resistant staph. It shows how we need to focus on prudent use of antibiotics.
A question I sometimes get is whether an animal with methicillin-resistant S. schleiferi poses a risk to people. We don't really know, but the risk is probably quite limited.
- S. schleiferi coagulans infections in people are extremely rare, so this bug doesn't seem to have much of an affinity for humans.
- S. schleiferi schleiferi infections in people are more common, but it is thought that this subtype is a "human Staphylococcus." Therefore, while it can cause infections in people (usually infections in people that are already sick and/or in hospital), it probably comes from people, not animals.
- So, overall, the risk posed by infected animals is minimal. However, some S. schleiferi can be very drug resistant and you don't really want to have an infection with a multidrug resistant bacterium of any kind ("you're case is very unique" isn't something you want to hear from your doctor), so using good general infection control and hygiene practices around infected dogs makes sense.
Never upset the local snake charmer
Maybe the Occupy movement should take some tips from an Indian man who expressed his frustration with government corruption by releasing venomous snakes into a government office. Upset by the slow pace of the bureaucracy and demands for bribes, the man (the local snake charmer) dumped 40 snakes, including 4 cobras, onto the floor of the local land registry office. The people in the office weren't impressed, and neither were the snakes by the look of the video. Not a healthy idea for either species.
