An elderly British woman almost died all because she let her dog lick her face.
While allowing our dogs to lick our face is common and a wonderful sign of affection, it can also be pretty dangerous, too.
The online medical journal BMJ Case Reports recently wrote that an elderly British woman almost died after letting her dog lick her face. A relative of the woman grew concerned when she started slurring while speaking on the phone, and became unresponsive.
When paramedics got to her home, they found her slumped semi-conscious in a chair, and immediately took her to the hospital. The woman was confused, had a headache, diarrhea and high fever, and worst of all, her kidneys were shutting down. Blood tests revealed that the 70-year-old woman had contracted sepsis, or blood poisoning, from her Italian greyhound.
More tests determined that that capnocytophaga canimorsus bacteria, which is found in the mouths of dogs and cats led to the woman’s illness.
“This is an interesting case because neither scratch nor bite was established, although close petting including licks was reported,” doctors from the Department of Medicine for the Elderly at the University College London Hospitals wrote in the case report.
“This is an organism carried in the mouths of dog and it causes a very bad sepsis infection,” according to CBS News. Although, this is uncommon because it was a lick, and not a bite.
While there is a common myth that says dogs mouths are cleaner than humans mouths, both contain bacteria, and studies have revealed harmful pathogens in dogs’ mouths. If you have a cut in your mouth, or your gums are bleeding, bacteria from a dog’s tongue can enter the open wound and spread infection to other parts of the body.
“The last thing you want to do is alarm people that they’ll be infected if they get licked or kissed by a dog,” Farber told CBS.
One thing you should avoid: allowing dogs to lick newborn babies because their immune systems aren’t strong enough yet to fight that kind of infection.
As far as the elderly woman, she recovered fully after a month in the hospital, where she spent two weeks in intensive care.
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[Featured Image Credit: CBS News]
‘Lick Of Death’: The Reason You May Not Want Your Dog To Lick Your Face is an article from: LifeDaily