Pets Can Make You Sick

Sleeping with your pet or pets can make you sick. While this phenomenon is rare, it can happen, according to a report by Elizabeth Weise in USA Today.

Good hygiene practices mean keeping your pet alongside your bed, not in it, according to an upcoming paper about animal-human disease transmission. The whitepaper will be published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

More than 60 percent of U.S. households have a pet, and research indicates about 14 percent to 62 percent of pet owners let their dogs and cats sleep with them.

This can be injurious to your health, according to Bruno Chomel, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“There are private places in the household, and I think our pets should not go beyond next to the bed,” Chomel says. “Having a stuffed animal in your bed is fine, not a real one.”

Chomel and co-author Ben Sun, chief veterinarian with the California Department of Public Health, searched medical journals and turned up a hair-raising list of possible pathogens.

There is plague (i.e. bubonic plague) and chagas disease, which can cause life-threatening heart and digestive system disorders. Also, there’s cat-scratch disease which can be caused from being licked by infected cats.
Although many people like kissing their pet, it may not be such a good idea, according to reporter Weise. Further, researchers have found several cases where various infections are transmitted in this manner.

“The risk is rare, but when it occurs it can be very nasty, and especially in immune-compromised people and the very young,” says Chomel, who specializes in zoonoses – the study of disease transmission between animal and humans.

Larry Kornegay, president of the American Veterinary Medical Association, called the article “pretty balanced.” These cases are “uncommon if not rare,” but even so, pet owners should use common sense when handling their pets to reduce risk.

Washing hands after playing with pets and regular veterinary wellness visits are very important, says Kornegay, who practices in Houston.

In general, he says, “the benefits of having a pet, whether or not you sleep with it, far outweigh the negatives, which are quite uncommon.”

Kornegay notes many pet owners disagree with the research findings. “They tell me they’ve slept with their pets for years and they never got sick,” he says.

WMB tends to agree with the latter position.

We have a pet Sheltie and although we do not sleep with our pet, we feel confident our health is in no way, shape, or form compromised.

In fact, the benefits of walking her and maintaining her overall health far outweigh any risk because of everyday exposure.

Pets are dependent on us for their needs and, in turn, they maintain our mental health because they bring out our affection and caring.

WMB believes that if you are comfortable with your pet, and there’s no known transmission of disease, you should maintain your pet-oriented lifestyle.

The risks are negligible, the benefits tangible.

TechMan

Making Numbers Add Up

Math is one of those subjects that people either love or hate. For those people who struggle with math, what if a little electrical jolt (pardon the imagery link with “Frankenstein” in the lab) to the brain could improve your skills?

A new study at the University of Oxford found that applying electrical currents to certain parts of the brain improved a person’s mathematical performance for up to six months.

“We are very excited to see these results”, says Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford and lead author of the study. “We actually aimed to get to this stage in a few years, but we got there sooner than expected.”

Researchers used a technique known as trans-cranial direct current stimulation. This is a non-invasive technique where weak electrical current is applied to the parietal lobe, an area of the brain responsible for numerical understanding, spatial perception, and navigation.

Because the study is relatively small and still in the early stages, some doctors are skeptical over whether practical applications will ever result from the findings. That aside, the results are exciting in the realm of brain research.

Until now, there had not been a treatment targeting numerical ability without having significant side effects to other areas of the brain, such as impaired attention or focus.

“I am certainly not advising people to go around giving themselves electrical shocks, but we are extremely excited about the potential of our findings,’’ Cohen Kadosh says.

“Electrical stimulation will most likely not turn you into Albert Einstein, but if we’re successful, it might be able to help some people to better cope with math.”

Math Skills Matched

Fifteen healthy adults with normal mathematical abilities were involved in the study. Each participant had to learn a series of fake symbols that represented numbers while receiving the noninvasive brain stimulation.

The results, published in the journal Current Biology, showed that the brain stimulation to the parietal lobe improved the participants’ ability to learn the new numbers compared to those who were not stimulated or those who were stimulated in other areas of the brain. The improvements lasted six months after the week-long exercise.

Targeting Learning Disabilities

Cohen Kadosh says the stimulation could help a variety of people with disabilities that stem from the parietal lobe.

About 15 to 20 percent of the population has moderate to severe numerical disabilities, and many other people lose their number processing skills as a result of stoke, dementia or other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dyscalculia is a disability in which people have specific difficulty in learning mathematics. It is associated with dyslexia since many people easily confuse math symbols and numbers.

Dr. Stefani Hines is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Beaumont Hospital’s Center for Human Development in Oakland County, Mich. She often sees children with learning disabilities such as dyscalculia.

“I’m working in the trenches and I’ve never heard of this as a treatment for math disabilities,” Hines says. “This might hold some promises at some point in the future if we can figure out what population it will serve and we make sure there are no risky side effects.”

Degenerative Disease Treatment

Brain stimulation also has gained attention as an experimental treatment for degenerative diseases and stroke. Numerous clinical trials have been set up in recent years for patients who suffer from such illnesses.

“There is a lot of work ongoing to find optimal ways to do this stimulation,” said Dr. Bruce Dobkin, professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“But there are still a lot of questions, like where exactly to stimulate, what are the parameters, the best frequency, force and amplitude, and how often this treatment should take place.”

Real Life Possibilities

Simply put, Dobkin says everything in the brain is like electrical activity and electrical stimulation bumps up that activity between the neurons.

“The flexibility and adaptability in the brain is pretty miraculous,” Dobkin says. “It’s nothing at all magical, but the real question is: Will this tool be powerful enough for general use, especially in rehab or to enhance learning in developmental disorders?”

Some Healthy Skepticism

With all such groundbreaking discoveries comes doubt or skepticism.

Dr. David Lowenstein, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami School of Medicine, agrees that much more research is required before brain stimulation is used in real life.

Lowenstein says further trials require appropriate control groups to make sure that any observed effects of the stimulation are actual changes and not the placebo effect.

From Our View

WMB believes these studies have merit, but they are in their early stages and further study is needed before wider applications can be considered. Further, larger sampling with more diversity in demographics also is likely required before objective analyses can be applied to these studies.

Unlike other areas of the body, most notably the heart, the brain and its complex functions remain an uncharted frontier with many mysteries which defy easy study or explanation.

Still, it’s exciting to see researchers push the boundaries of our knowledge in an effort to improve the quality of life for those with disabilities while gaining greater understanding of what controls the mind.

This post is by TechMan, WMB co-author who blogs about issues, trends and ideas affecting business, industry, technology and consumers. If you like this post, please share it.