WASHINGTON — In case you needed more reasons not to kiss a mouse, health investigators have found a good one: salmonella. | Funny, of all the things I've ever considered kissing, mice never came up. |
"Pocket pets" — rodent species such as hamsters, mice and rats — can infect their human owners with salmonella, including drug-resistant forms of the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. | Insert "Is that a ________ in your pocket...." joke here. |
The warning follows an outbreak in which 14 pet owners in 10 states contracted a rare strain of salmonella, a gastrointestinal bacteria that causes diarrhea, vomiting and, in rare cases, death. Doctors suspect that many more people could have been infected by the rodents, which have been traced to pet distributors in 11 states and Canada. "It's basically all over the eastern half of the United States," said Kirk Smith, supervisor of the Foodborne, Vectorborne and Zoonotic Disease Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health, which discovered the outbreak. "There's a lot of movement between the breeders and the distributors and the pet stores." |