{"id":536,"date":"2009-09-25T15:08:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T20:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=536"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:30:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:30:09","slug":"mrsa-in-pets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/mrsa-in-pets\/2009\/09\/25\/","title":{"rendered":"MRSA in Pets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As every card-carrying ID specialist knows, hardly anything is more common these days than patients with — and questions about — methcillin-resistant Staph aureus<\/em>, or\u00a0MRSA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And one question I’ve been hearing increasingly these days is “Could I be getting my recurrent infection from Rufus?”<\/p>\n

To which the answer is, unfortunately, yes.<\/p>\n

(I had a dog named Rufus.\u00a0 No offense intended to people <\/em>out there actually named Rufus.)<\/p>\n

Now along comes this article in the New York <\/em>Times<\/em><\/a>, which no doubt will stimulate the economy by prompting massive sales of hand-sanitizers, plus a flurry of trips to the vet to have Otto cultured.<\/p>\n

(That’s Otto — our cat — in the picture, FYI.)<\/p>\n

The article is self-explanatory — pets get MRSA, they can spread it to their owners and back — but did they have to put this caption under the picture of the dog?<\/p>\n

INFECTION<\/strong> Don Graff of Belle Mead, N.J., with his English setter, Sunny. The dog contracted MRSA after a spider bite<\/strong><\/em> [emphasis added] but was given medication and has improved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spider bite!\u00a0 If there’s one thing this medical writer should have figured out in her background research for the piece, it’s that MRSA infections are frequently mistaken for spider bites<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And I’d bet good money that Sunny (the English setter in the Times<\/em> story) never had one — for which I’m sure he’s quite relieved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As every card-carrying ID specialist knows, hardly anything is more common these days than patients with — and questions about — methcillin-resistant Staph aureus, or\u00a0MRSA. And one question I’ve been hearing increasingly these days is “Could I be getting my recurrent infection from Rufus?” To which the answer is, unfortunately, yes. (I had a dog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[403,632,653,712,790,868,869],"class_list":["post-536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-misc","tag-hand-sanitizers","tag-mrsa-infections","tag-new-york-times","tag-pets","tag-recurrent-infection","tag-spider-bite","tag-spider-bites"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}