More from the ASM-ESCMID MRSA in animals meeting…
Dr. Joe Rubin presented some data on antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus bacteria from dogs and people in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada). The bacterial isolates came from dogs carrying S. aureus and from dogs infected with MRSA. When you look at the resistance patterns of the S. aureus
People sometimes panic after they hear that their pet has been diagnosed with an MRSA infection. ("Dr. Google" doesn’t help because if you search "MRSA" you can come up with a lot of scary information). However, it’s very important to understand that just because MRSA is involved, it does not mean that an animal (or
I’m in London (UK) for the ASM-ESCMID conference on methicillin-resistant staphylococci in animals: veterinary and public health consequences. I’ll provide various updates on interesting presentations over the next few days.
Dr. Armando Hoet from the Ohio State University (OSU) presented data on MRSA screening of dogs admitted to the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
When it comes to methicillin-resistant staphylococci in pets, MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus) gets most of the attention. That’s fair since it’s emerging as an important health problem, and can be transmitted between pets and people. Now another staph, MRSP (methicillin-resistant S. pseudintermedius) is getting more attention, and it’s actually a more common cause
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are an emerging problem in dogs and cats. They’re a huge problem in human medicine, and the emergence of MRSA in pets can be directly traced to the spread of MRSA in people.
A big problem with MRSA infections is that they can be difficult to treat because they can be resistant to
I received a flyer from Zoologix, a company that offers various (typically unvalidated and unproven) PCR tests for animals. The flyer headline was "Pets can carry MRSA – but testing can help."
Testing in certain situations is useful, but this is almost always limited to diagnosis of animals with active infections (i.e. they’re
A recent question: "If a dog has severe atopy that is poorly managed, and is colonized w/ MRSA (superficial dermatidis on neck ventrum and axilla) are repeat infections w/ MRSA likely, if the allergies cannot be controlled?"
Dogs with atopy (allergic skin disease) are prone to opportunistic infections because of the abnormal skin "environment" and
There’s been a lot of talk (hype) in the press about pet bites and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). This relates to a paper in Lancet Infectious Diseases regarding infections associated with pet bites. Some press articles are more sensational than others, but most are taking the bite infection paper and building in
The European Food Safety Authority, along with the European CDC and European Medicines Agency, have released a report about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in livestock, pets and food. There’s nothing too earth-shattering in it, and nothing more than what we’ve been saying all along, but some of the points are worth repeating.
There is a nice, concise commentary in the most recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal about preventing infections in the home. It covers three important organisms: MRSA, Clostridium difficile and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). An excellent aspect of this particular commentary is its relatively low-key approach, with an emphasis on routine, basic practices such
