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pet store puppy looking up at owner

Did your pet store puppy make you sick?

Recently, we’ve talked about how a dog’s gut health may be very similar to our own, a great boon to researchers examining the human gut.

Unfortunately, one of the greatest problems in human health — the overuse of antibiotics — may be affecting the health of our canine friends and sicken us too, based on a recent CDC report about pet store puppies spreading antibiotic-resistant infections to humans.

More than 100 people in 18 states (including pet store employees) were made sick from exposure to puppies carrying Campylobacter jejuni, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness from bacteria in America, over nearly two years, according to the CDC.

Testing on eight dogs and 10 humans revealed resistance to seven common antibiotics (including ciprofloxacin, erythromycin and tetracycline) that are typically used to treat human Campylobacter infections.

How did this happen?

Based on drug records of nearly 150 pups, nearly all of them received at least one round of antibiotics before they arrived at the pet store or during their time there.

This practice of treating puppies with antibiotics is not surprising and largely unnecessary, but is used to offset poor infection control and management by larger breeding companies, according to experts.

“Antibiotics should only be used to treat illness, not to compensate for poor practices — whether it’s trucking dogs long distances and having poor hygiene in the process along the way,” says Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for the Public Interest Research Group in STAT.

“These are lifesaving medicines that should only be used to treat sick animals or sick people.”

As a result, the CDC created educational materials specifically for pet store employees to remind them to wear gloves when cleaning pet cages, eat meals away from areas where animals are fed and wash their hands.

Contact with animals that have been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria isn’t a new thing. Investigators have been studying these problems for more than a decade.

In addition to keeping your hands clean with plain old soap and water (avoid antibacterial soaps), one of the best things you can do to protect your health and maintain the proper balance of bacteria in your gut is to take a probiotic.

Maintaining the diversity of bacteria in your gut is so much easier when you take a probiotic with multiple species of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.

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