Media reported last week that the UK health authority (UKHSA) is considering the possibility of a link between cases of childhood hepatitis and the presence of dogs in the vicinity of patients. This came as a result of a technical report the agency released last week. What exactly does the report say about pets?

The dog hypothesis.
The hypothesis that this hepatitis is related to pets is far from the main line of research. The report devotes only one paragraph of its 49 pages to this hypothesis. He explains that research has observed a “relatively high” number of cases of contact with dogs, particularly 70%.

A trail in a mess.
Experts are working to discover what this data means, but they do not guarantee that it is necessarily relevant. These studies are based on surveys of family members, and the report itself explains that the data they have is very limited.

As mentioned earlier, the main suspect in these cases is adenovirus, a type of virus that is very common in humans, associated with various diseases of greater or lesser severity (mostly mild), but other explanations are still being sought. . This hypothesis is inconsistent with the possibility that pets have anything to do with it, but it’s the main one the teams are working with.

When pets are related to diseases.
There are many diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans, known as zoonosis. Covid has probably become the most notorious zoonosis, but before the pandemic, diseases such as malaria, Zika or rabies were among the most feared.

Zoonoses are more common in settings where people interact with larger numbers of animals, such as farmland and rural areas, but can also be transmitted through pets. Among the most common zoonoses caused by domestic animals in the Spanish context is rabies or toxoplasmosis.

Prevention is key.
Some of these diseases are serious, life-threatening in the case of rabies; but also rare. And certainly pets are less exposed to other external factors such as wild animals. Not least, animal vaccines and medicines also play an important role in preventing these diseases.

Image | sabina fratila