I just read a recent Medscape article entitled Human-Animal Interactions: a primer for clinicians. I assumed it would be one more relatively generic article about zoonoses, focusing on agriculture. Some of those aspects were there, but it had a lot more depth than I expected and went beyond the same old superficial talking points.
NDM-1 in a cat
When bacteria containing NDM-1 (New Delhi metallobetalactamase 1) were first identified a few years ago, I talked about it during presentations as something bad that’s coming our way. NDM-1 is an enzyme that gives the bacteria that possesses it resistance to a huge range of antibiotics, to the point that few or no viable treatment
Physicians, vets and zoonotic diseases
People like to talk about "one medicine" a lot. It refers to the concept that we’re all animals, and that human and veterinary medicine should be one big happy family of healthcare providers that maintain the health of the entire family, human and non-human. I get a bit jaded talking about one medicine because there’s
Putting “One Medicine” into action
People like to talk about the "one medicine" concept. It’s a great concept, but my big issue with it is there’s a lot of talk but not a lot of action.
One way of thinking about "one medicine" in terms of people and pets is to focus on the health of the entire household as
VRE in Arctic birds
In the same edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases as a report on Campylobacter jejuni in macaroni penguins in Antarctica, there is a report about vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) in glaucous gulls in Point Barrow, a remote area of Alaska.
Vancomycin-resistant enterococci are an important problem in human medicine, mainly in hospitals where they can cause