Salmonella found in 2.5% of US dogs and cats tested 2012-2014

Abstract

Eleven laboratories collaborated to determine the periodic prevalence ofin a population of dogs and cats in the United States visiting veterinary clinics. Fecal samples (2,965) solicited from 11 geographically dispersed veterinary testing laboratories were collected in 36 states between January 2012 and April 2014 and tested using a harmonized method. The overall study prevalence ofin cats (3 of 542) was <1%. The prevalence in dogs (60 of 2,422) was 2.5%. Diarrhea was present in only 55% of positive dogs; however, 3.8% of the all diarrheic dogs were positive, compared with 1.8% of the nondiarrheic dogs.-positive dogs were significantly more likely to have consumed raw food (= 0.01), to have consumed probiotics (= 0.002), or to have been given antibiotics (= 0.01). Rural dogs were also more likely to bepositive than urban (= 0.002) or suburban (= 0.001) dogs. In the 67 isolates, 27 unique serovars were identified, with three dogs having two serovars present. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of 66 isolates revealed that only four of the isolates were resistant to one or more antibiotics. Additional characterization of the 66 isolates was done using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Sequence data compared well to resistance phenotypic data and were submitted to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This study suggests an overall decline in prevalence of-positive dogs and cats over the last decades and identifies consumption of raw food as a major risk factor forinfection. Of note is that almost half of the-positive animals were clinically nondiarrheic.