The Flip-Flop Effect

The transmission of the bacterial infection MRSA between humans and their pets, and vice-versa.

Reporting on the risk of catching MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) from your pet, Isla Whitcroft wrote in The Daily Mail:

An estimated one third of us carry the staphylococcus bacteria at any one time, and two percent of that third carry the MRSA form.

While we are healthy and our immune system is strong, the bacteria is harmless and quickly shed by our body (either washed off or dying within a week) but before this happens it can be passed on to others who then become carriers.

Now it appears humans have passed this bacteria on to pets and the pets are passing it back to us – what experts are calling the “flip-flop” effect.

According to Jacob E. Osterhout in The New York Daily News:

A study by Ohio State University researchers found that 5.7 percent of dogs in the school’s veterinary hospital were MRSA carriers.

That said, Osterhout noted that “humans are more likely to acquire MRSA from other humans than from pets.”

(Bacteria were associated with flip-flops in a more direct sense in August, when it was revealed that researchers at the University of Miami found more than 18,000 bacteria on a single pair of flip-flops.)