Drug-resistant staph infections are found in pets

October 30, 2007|By Delthia Ricks Newsday

MELVILLE, N.Y. — Some veterinarians are documenting more and more cases of drug-resistant staph infections in dogs and cats, but say there is no reason for alarm among pet owners if they follow measures of simple hygiene.

Dr. Lewis Gelfand, a Long Beach, N.Y., veterinarian, said he's treating an increasing number of animals with skin eruptions infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - MRSA. The cases seem to have increased, he said, in recent months.

"It's definitely a rapidly expanding problem," Gelfand said, adding that he has had 19 cases in dogs in the past year. "I believe it is a significantly underdiagnosed problem. We have been seeing dermatological cases as well as open sores."

Treatment can prove so difficult in some instances that pets have to be hospitalized, occasionally for weeks, and infused with intravenous antibiotics, which carry side effects.

Dr. Patrick McDonough, an assistant professor in the diagnostics laboratory at Cornell University's veterinary college, said pets contract MRSA from their owners. "This is what we call reverse zoonosis, the organism is moving from people to animals," McDonough said. "Once animals colonize it we don't know how long they maintain it but this is one case where they are sharing what we have."

Because MRSA is so widespread, McDonough said it has been cultured in a variety of animals, including pigs and horses.

"Staph are very good at scavenging genetic material from other organisms and using it" as a mechanism for survival, McDonough explained. "But just because it's residing in the nose of a dog or cat doesn't mean the organism is causing infection."

Newsday is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

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