A recent case report in the journal American Journal of Case Reports (Garza et al. 2023) implicated a pet cat as the cause of a person’s recurrent Clostridium (Clostridioides) difficile infection.
Spoiler alert: it’s a pretty weak link. They have a catchy title: “Look what the cat dragged in! Recurrent Clostridioides difficile
And now for something completely different.
We’ve studied Clostridium difficile in my lab for years and we probably have one of the world’s most diverse collections of this important bacterium. We have thousands of isolates from people, pets, livestock and many different wildlife species (as well as from meat, vegetables and water). Most of the
A reader has been trying to post a question about an older post on C. difficile in visitation dogs. Here’s the question and my answer:
Do the dogs have a risk of getting sick from the C. difficile bacteria? I understand from the post that they can ingest and shed it in their feces
It seems like half the people I know have sent me this article about Clostridium difficile for comment. It’s a news article about a New England Journal of Medicine research paper (Eyre et al 2013).
The paper has some interesting findings. They used whole-genome sequencing to look at the genetic makeup of C.
I mean that two ways.
1) Do you know what a bully stick actually is?
2) Do you know what’s in it?
A recent study headed up by Dr. Lisa Freeman, published in this month’s Canadian Veterinary Journal (Freeman et al., CVJ 2013;54:50-54), looked into this by asking people what they thought bully sticks were
About 500 people have sent me this article over the past week, so I guess I should get around to making some comments. The article entitled "Using a dog’s superior olfactory sensitivity to identify Clostridium difficile in stools and patients: proof of principle study" (Bomers et al 2012) is in the Christmas edition
A couple questions that I received about C. difficile and hospital visitation dogs:
Is there any concern about cross contamination from dogs/handlers that visit health facilities and get contaminated by C. difficile? I see on this site a concern about dogs being contaminated by visitation and I wonder if the Delta Society has considered this
I get this question surprisingly often. In one way, that’s good because it shows increasing awareness of the potential for interspecies transmission of microorganisms. In some situations, when a person has an infection, the pet should be considered in case it was the source of the infection and/or in case it’s at risk of becoming
Clostridium difficile is a high-profile bacterium, being an important cause of illness and death in people. It can also be found in various animal species, including dogs and cats. In a study we published earlier this year (Lefebvre et al, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 2009), factors associated with
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
