I’m giving my brain a short break from canine flu, so here’s an interesting report about a multistate US outbreak of salmonellosis linked to… no, not turtles… no, not baby poultry… but guinea pigs.
While guinea pigs have been associated with a few different zoonotic diseases, they’re a pretty benign pet species overall. Yet, our
A series of strange but rare infections or the sign of a new problem? That’s always the question we have to think about when there’s a report of a new disease. Determining that can be a challenge, and often “time will tell” is the true answer.
A paper in the most recent edition of the
All animals pose some risk of infection to people, to one degree or another, but the risk varies a lot between animal species. I guess I’ve always considered guinea pigs to be relatively benig, with a few zoonotic disease concerns but with bites probably being the biggest risk.
I still think that’s true, but a
As with most "pocket pets," guinea pigs don’t get a lot of attention in the scientific literature. As a result, we are limited in what we know about certain diseases in this species, and we tend to rely a lot on personal experience, small case studies and extrapolation from other species. It’s not that these
Guinea pigs are relatively benign pets in terms of zoonotic diseases, but like any animal, they can carry some pathogens that are transmissible to people. This was highlighted in a poster presentation at the recent International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta. The poster (Bartholomew et al) described a CDC investigation into an outbreak of
A Kitchener, Ontario family is dealing with a household outbreak of ringworm, likely contracted from a new pet guinea pig. Ringworm is a fungal infection cause by a few different types of fungi. Some ringworm fungi are able to infect both people and animals, and those can be spread in households from direct contact
It seems like whenever a hit TV show or movie features an animal, there’s concern about the "101 Dalmatians effect," whereby there’s a mad rush to get the animal for a pet. When 101 Dalmatians was a hit movie, there was a huge spike in sales of this rather unusual breed – a
