29 Mar 2014

Fears as reports link pet cats and a dog to TB infections

Pets are in the media firing line as two cats and a dog are linked to tuberculosis infections in what are believed to be the first cases of their kind in the world.

A teenager contracted tuberculosis from her pet kitten, in what health officials say is among the first cases in the world of humans getting the disease from cats.

Jessica Livings, 19, had to have emergency surgery when she was struck down with pneumonia caused by TB and her mother Claire also contracted a dormant form of the disease, it has been reported.

It is thought the pair contracted TB when they were cleaning a wound on their cat, Onyx, which they adopted only weeks before.

Ms Livings told the Daily Mail: “I lost a stone and a half in five weeks, I was very ill and had fevers, cold sweats and hallucinations. I didn’t realise what was real and what wasn’t.”

She said she was diagnosed with the disease in October after a vet raised concerns over an outbreak of TB in the Newbury area of Berkshire.

Vet Carl Gorman, who reported the outbreak, told the Mail he believed it started with a local herd of cows contracting bovine TB.

Public Health England (PHE) this week said that two people in England have developed TB from a cat in the first ever recorded cases of cat-to-human transmission.

Screening public

PHE has offered precautionary screening to 39 people who may have been in contact with cats infected with the Mycobacterium bovis bacterium, which causes TB in cattle and in other species.

Of these, 24 people accepted screening. Two were found to have active TB and there were two cases of latent TB, which means they had been exposed to TB at some point but did not have an active infection.

Dr Dilys Morgan from PHE said: “These are the first documented cases of cat-to-human transmission, and so although PHE has assessed the risk of people catching this infection from infected cats as being very low, we are recommending that household and close contacts of cats with confirmed ‘M bovis’ infection should be assessed and receive public health advice.”

It has also emerged that a child under 10 may have been infected with TB by a pet dog.

The child from Gloucestershire developed a latent form of the disease last year after the family pet fell ill.

The victim managed to make a full recovery but vets were forced to destroy the dog after screening the family last year.

‘Scientifically impossible’

If confirmed it would be the first ever case of its kind in the UK, Public Health England (PHE) said.

But a spokesman claimed it was “scientifically impossible” to prove whether the dormant form of TB contracted by the child had come from the dog or another source.

The spokesman said: “A family in Gloucestershire were tested for tuberculosis (TB) last year after their pet dog was confirmed with the bovine form of the infection.

“Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) is a bacterium that causes bovine TB in cattle and although the organism can infect and cause TB in humans, the risk of infection for the general public is very low.

“The family is known to have connections to a veterinary practice and this was investigated as a potential source of infection.”