Dog Kisses Can Infect a Lethal Superbug for Humans, Study Says

We may want to think twice about letting our dog give us a big slimy kiss on the face. Pets could be sharing more than unconditional love with their owners, according to new research by scientists in Europe. They could be transmitting antibiotic-resistant superbugs to human members of their homes.

A study by researchers at the University of Lisbon in Portugal and the Royal Veterinary College in London found that pets and humans in the same homes often had an antibiotic-resistant strain of E. coli in their systems, according to a summary of the study carried out by the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. The study will be presented at the society's next conference later this month.

And while the research did not conclude exactly how the bacteria were transmitted or in which direction, the researchers say it does suggest that we should be hygienic when it comes to contact with pets, which includes avoiding kissing them and washing hands after tying up poop bags, and even after petting them.

Drug-resistant bacteria cannot be treated with antibiotics, which makes something that is usually treatable, such as a staph infection, life-threatening. In the United States, drug-resistant bacteria infect more than 2 million people and kill at least 23,000 people each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sian Frosini of the Royal Veterinary College, one of the authors of the study, told BBC5 Live that this specific superbug is not new: it has been found in humans for years and many people probably carry it without any symptoms.

“It's perfectly natural to have bacteria, and some of them can be resistant. If you are a healthy person, then that's fine,” Frosini told the radio program. “The problem arises when you have someone who lives in that household, who may have something that makes them more susceptible to infection... You will be at greater risk of contracting these resistant insects.”

But the possibility of sharing a superbug between people and animals is a relatively new discovery. The researchers collected fecal samples from 58 healthy pet owners and their 18 cats and 40 dogs in Portugal. In the United Kingdom, 56 healthy people and their 45 dogs were regularly sampled.

They found that 1% of pets (14 dogs and one cat) and 13% of humans carried drug-resistant bacteria, but the number of households where both humans and animals had the virus was much smaller.

“We found four homes where both the owner and the pet had one of these types of resistant bacteria at the same time,” Frosini said. “And in fact we found in two of those homes that these bacteria, when we looked at their genetics, were exactly the same between the owner and the dog. So you can see that something is being shared. What cannot be said about the work we had done is what direction it was going in.”

It's not hard to see why a lick of our pet can be full of germs. When that tongue is not giving us a welcome kiss, our dog or cat is using it to groom itself, even to keep their private parts clean. But Frosini acknowledged that it is possible that human subjects have been the source of the bacteria found in their pets due to poor hygiene.

KEEP READING: