In the last week the news has reached the media that the United Kingdom health authority (UKHSA) has considered the possibility of a link between cases of childhood hepatitis and the presence of dogs in the environment of patients. This has happened as a result of a technical report published by the agency last week. What exactly does the report say about pets?
The canine hypothesis.
The hypothesis that this hepatitis is related to pets is far from being the main avenue of investigation. The report dedicates only one paragraph of its 49 pages to this hypothesis. He explains that in the surveys carried out, a “relatively high” number of cases in which there was contact with dogs was observed, specifically 70%.
A track in a tangle.
Experts are working to explore what this data means, but they do not guarantee that it is necessarily relevant. These investigations are based on questionnaires made to the relatives of the patients, and the report itself explains that the data they have is very limited.
As has already been pointed out, the main suspect in these cases is an adenovirus, a type of virus that is very common in humans, linked to various diseases of greater or lesser severity (very often mild), although other explanations are still being sought. This hypothesis is not incompatible with the possibility that pets have something to do with it, but it is the main hypothesis with which the teams work.
When pets are related to diseases.
There are many diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans, known as zoonoses. Covid has probably become the most infamous zoonosis, but before the pandemic, diseases such as malaria, Zika or rabies were among the most feared.
Zoonoses are more common in environments where people interact with a greater number of animals, such as agricultural contexts and rural areas, but they can also be transmitted through domestic animals. Among the most common zoonoses caused by pets in the Spanish context are rabies or toxoplasmosis.
Prevention is key.
Some of these diseases are serious, in the case of rabies even life-threatening; but also rare. And it is precisely that domestic animals are less exposed to other external agents such as wild animals. Not least, animal vaccines and medications also play an important role in preventing these diseases.
