Therapy dogs come with germ risk

NEW YORK — Therapy dogs can bring more than joy and comfort to hospitalized kids. They can also bring stubborn germs.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore were suspicious that the dogs might pose an infection risk to patients with weakened immune systems. So they conducted some tests when Pippi, Poppy, Badger and Winnie visited 45 children getting cancer treatment.

They discovered that kids who spent more time with the dogs had a six- times greater chance of coming away with superbug bacteria than kids who spent less time with the animals. But the study also found that washing the dogs before visits and using special wipes while they’re in the hospital took away the risk of spreading that bacteria. Therapy dog Winnie gets ready to visit patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Pet therapy can help people recover from a range of health problems. Past studies have shown dogs or other animals can ease anxiety and sadness, lower blood pressure and even reduce the amount of medications some patients need.

But there have been episodes of the superbug MRSA riding around on healthy- looking therapy

dogs. Health officials have tied MRSA to as many as 11,000 U. S. deaths a year.

Among kids who had no MRSA, the researchers found the superbug on about 10 percent of the samples taken from those kids after the dog visits. They also found MRSA on nearly 40 percent of the samples from the dogs. The researchers think the dogs were generally clean of MRSA when they came to the hospital, but picked it up while they were there.

Under hospital protocols, therapy dogs must be bathed within a day of a visit. Children who see them are supposed to use hand sanitizer “but that wasn’t strictly enforced,” said Kathryn Dalton, one of the researchers.

Later in the study, the researchers asked the dogs’ owners to bathe the animals with a special shampoo before the visits. They also had the dogs patted down every five to 10 minutes with disinfecting wipes at the hospital.

Those steps dramatically decreased the bacteria level on the dogs.

“I really had the opportunity to see how important these dogs were to the patients,” Dalton said. After the sessions with the dogs, the kids “would say how much this made their day.”