Two people in England have developed tuberculosis after contact with a domestic cat infected with the disease, Public Health England (PHE) and the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) have announced.
Health officials found nine cases of cats infected with ‘Mycobacterium bovis’ (‘M. bovis’) in Berkshire and Hampshire in 2013. 24 people who had contact with these cats were screened for tuberculosis, and doctors found two with active cases of the disease and two more with latent tuberculosis, meaning that they had been exposed to the disease in the past.
Transmission of ‘M. bovis’ from infected animals to humans can occur by inhaling or ingesting bacteria shed by the animal or through contamination of unprotected cuts in the skin while handling infected animals or their carcasses.
Dr Dilys Morgan, head of gastrointestinal, emerging and zoonotic diseases department at PHE, said:
“It’s important to remember that this was a very unusual cluster of TB in domestic cats. ‘M. bovis’ is still uncommon in cats – it mainly affects livestock animals. These are the first documented cases of cat-to-human transmission, and so although PHE has assessed the risk of people catching this infection from infected cats as being very low, we are recommending that household and close contacts of cats with confirmed ‘M. bovis’ infection should be assessed and receive public health advice.”
The findings of the animal health aspects of this investigation are published in the journal Veterinary Record