London: Two people have been infected with tuberculosis from pet cats that might have ventured into badger setts in the first recorded cases in England.
Two further people have contracted the mycobacterium bovis infection but have not shown any symptoms. The incidents are linked to nine cats found to have the infection at veterinary practices in Newbury, Berkshire, according to Public Health England (PHE).
The two patients who developed the disease were responding to treatment. Veterinarians believe that domestic cats could be catching the disease by roaming into badger setts or from rodents that have been in badger setts. The public health body says transmission of the bacteria from infected animals to humans can occur by inhaling or ingesting germs shed by the animal or through contamination of unprotected cuts in the skin while handling infected animals or their carcasses.
However, the organisation said the risk of transmission from cats to humans was “very low”. Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore, a researcher in feline medicine, said people had become complacent about watching for the warning signs of TB. “We haven’t been seeing TB for so many years but bovis is back with a little bit more significance,” she said. “It’s important we don’t get blinkered and think it’s only badgers and cattle that get infected. This is a bacteria that is not very fussy about who it infects.”
She said she had dealt with cases in which dogs had also passed on mycobacterium bovis to humans. Nine cases of mycobacterium bovis infection in domestic cats in Berkshire and Hampshire were investigated by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency and PHE last year. PHE said it had offered TB screening to 39 people identified as having had contact with the nine infected cats. Of these, 24 people accepted screening. Two were found to have active TB and two cases of latent TB were detected, which means they had been exposed to TB but did not have an active infection.
PHE said there have been no further cases of TB in cats reported in Berkshire or Hampshire since March 2013. Analysis of the samples of active TB from the humans were indistinguishable from the infected cat samples. This “indicates transmission of the bacterium from an infected cat”, a PHE spokesman said. In the cases of latent TB infection, it was not possible to confirm if they were caused by mycobacterium bovis. Dr Dilys Morgan, of the PHE said: “It’s important to remember that this was a very unusual cluster of TB in domestic cats.”
Daily Telegraph
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