The European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, presented new research indicating that healthy dogs and cats could transmit multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) to their hospitalized owners, and vice versa.  The study, conducted by Dr. Carolin Hackmann and her colleagues at Charité University Hospital Berlin, Germany, looked at over 2,800 hospital patients and their companion animals, testing for the most common superbugs in hospital patients, including MRSA, VRE, 3GCRE, and CRE, which are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Dogs and cats could be passing on drug-resistant bugs to owners, study finds. Image: MikeB Of the 2,891 hospital patients tested, 30% (871) tested positive for MDROs. The study also found that 15% of dogs and 5% of cats tested positive for at least one MDRO. Four cases matched phenotypically between pets and their owners, and one matched genetically.  The study suggests that while the level of shari...