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

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 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