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Healthy dogs and cats could transmit antibiotic-resistant bacteria to their owners, as well as genes that play a key role in bacterial resistance, according to new research being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID).
“Our findings verify not only the exchange of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but also of resistance genes between companion animals and their owners, underscoring the need for ongoing local surveillance programs to identify potential health risk.” human”, warns Juliana Menezes of the University of Lisbon (Portugal).
There is some concern about the role of companion animals as potential reservoirs of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria throughout the world.
For example, the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) is common in the intestines of healthy people and animals. There are several different types, and while most are harmless, some can cause serious food poisoning and life-threatening infections, including blood poisoning.
Particularly important are infections caused by highly resistant strains with ESBL- and AmpC-producing Enterobacteriaceae (AmpC-E) and carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE), which are resistant to multiple antibiotics, including penicillin and cephalosporins.
In this paper, the researchers wanted to find out how these resistant bacteria spread and whether interbreeding exists between healthy companion animals (ie cats and dogs) and their owners.
The health of the companion animals was assessed by their veterinarian when they attended the University of Lisbon Small Animal Veterinary Teaching Hospital and the Royal Veterinary College Small Animal Veterinary Referral Service at the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom. Only animals and their owners that had not experienced bacterial infections or taken antibiotics in the 3 months prior to the start of the study were recruited.
Faeces samples were obtained from 58 healthy people and their living 18 cats and 40 dogs from 41 households in Portugal, and from 56 healthy people and 45 dogs from 42 households in the UK.
Samples were collected at monthly intervals for four months and genetic sequencing was used to identify both the species of bacteria in each sample and the presence of drug resistance genes.
The researchers used Rep-PCR, a fast and easy-to-use molecular fingerprinting technique that helps identify related strains of bacteria. Because it is not as sensitive as whole genome sequencing, they also sequenced the strains to confirm possible exchange of resistant bacteria.
Between 2018 and 2020, 15 of 103 pets (15%; 1 cat and 14 dogs) and 15 of 114 (13%) household members in both countries were found to carry ESBL/AmpC-producing bacteria. Of these, nearly half of the dogs and cats (6 in Portugal and 1 in the UK), and a third of the household members (4 in Portugal and 1 in the UK), were colonized with at least one strain. multi-resistant.
In four Portuguese households, the ESBL/pAMPc resistance genes found in pets matched those found in their owners’ stool samples.
Also, in two of the homes, the microbes on the pets matched the E. coli strains found in their owners’ stool sample, but in the other two, there was no evidence that the bacteria shared.
“Sometimes bacteria may not share each other, but their resistance genes do,” he explains. Menezes. “These genes are located on mobile fragments of DNA, which means they can be transferred between different bacterial populations in animals and humans.”
He adds: “Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, antibiotic resistance was one of the biggest threats to public health because it can make conditions such as pneumonia, sepsis, urinary tract infections and wounds untreatable. Although the level of sharing of households that we have studied is low, healthy carriers can shed bacteria in their environment for months and can be a source of infection for other more vulnerable people and animals, such as the elderly and pregnant women. Our findings reinforce the need for people to practice good hygiene around their pets and reduce the use of unnecessary antibiotics in companion animals and people.”
This is an observational study and cannot prove that close contact with pets causes colonization with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and only suggests the possibility of such an effect.
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