Many people with pets can relate — on sick days, their dog or cat seems to know something is wrong. More so, they refuse to leave their side. They follow them from the bed to the couch and back again.
When pets keep close to their ailing humans, researchers have found it is possible to pass on the pathogen. Although scientists typically focus on animal-borne diseases that spread to humans (like the Avian flu), researchers are increasingly considering how diseases can spread in the reverse.
Scientists are finding that passing pathogens from humans to animals can result in strain mutations that have the possibility to reinfect humans. Researchers are calling for more attention to an understudied but possibly problematic topic.
Reverse Zoonoses
Zoonosis is when a disease spreads from animals to humans. When pathogens spread from human to animals, it’s called reverse zoonoses. The transmission can happen through a variety of forms including bacterial, parasitical or viral.
