Pet frogs can transmit salmonella
CDC investigation suggests people think twice about owning common aquarium species
By Nathan Seppa
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Buying your tyke a pet frog might carry a downside that extends well beyond the “ick” factor, a new study finds. Pet African dwarf frogs harboring salmonella have sickened at least 113 people, most of them children, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
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“This is the first multistate outbreak of salmonella associated with frogs,” says Shauna Mettee, an epidemiologist at the CDC in Atlanta who presented the findings October 22 in Vancouver, Canada, at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
CDC investigators became curious when doctors began reporting a spate of cases of the typhimurium subspecies of salmonella in 2009. Between April 2009 and March 2010, Mettee and her colleagues identified 113 cases of this infection, three-fourths occurring in children under age 10. The median age of the patients was 5. A sampling of 54 of these patients showed that about one-third needed hospitalization. Symptoms ranged from cramping to severe and even bloody diarrhea. There were no fatalities.