Love Your Dog? Don’t Take Antibiotics Without Good Reason
You’ve seen it: The motorhome with the dog riding on the dashboard. The guy in the site next door at the RV park walking two, maybe three pooches. Although we’ve never seen solid research, we sometimes get the sense that RVers are even more batty for canines that the average stix-and-brix Joe. OK, so RVers love their dogs.
If you love your dog, don’t take antibiotics unless you really need them.
Seriously, research from a Kansas State University veterinarian suggests that dog owners are far more likely to give their dogs a case of antibiotic resistant bacteria than they are to ‘pick up something’ from their pooch.
The University vet, Dr. Kate Stenske, says surveys show that nearly half of all dog owners share food with their dogs, and more than half allow the dog to sleep in the bed and lick them on the face. “We also know diseases can be shared between dogs and people,” Stenske said. “About 75 percent of emerging diseases are zoonotic, meaning they are transferrable between humans and other animals. With these two pieces of knowledge, I wanted to examine the public health aspects of such activities.”
What was the upshot of the research? The dread e-coli bacteria–that in some versions can even cause death–are common between dog and man. “People have it, dogs have it, and it normally doesn’t cause any problems,” she said. “But it can acquire genes to make it antibiotic resistant.”
The study examined fecal samples from dogs and their owners and looked at the bacteria’s DNA fingerprints. Stenske found that 10 percent of dog-human pairs shared the same E. coli strains. She also found that the E. coli had more resistance to common antibiotics than expected, although the owners had more multiple-drug resistant strains than their pets.
“This make us think that dogs are not likely to spread multiple drug-resistant E. coli to their owners, but perhaps owners may spread them to their dogs,” Stenske said. “What we learn from this is that antibiotics really do affect the bacteria within our gastrointestinal tract, and we should only take them when we really need to — and always finish the entire prescription as directed.”
The research also showed that while sharing the same bed, and exchanging kisses didn’t seem to have any relationship to the spread of e-coli, hand washing does make a difference. Ha! And you thought Mom was the only one who harped on that subject.
photo: newswise.com
