Can snuggling up to your pet give you MRSA?

"MRSA is a form of staphylococcus bacteria which have become resistant to antibiotics as a result of the medicine's overuse.

The first cases were reported in Seventies but these were relatively isolated. However, in the Nineties there was a huge increase in the number of cases, mainly in hospitals. But today MRSA is also found in the community - spread by the sheer number of people going in and out of hospital.

An estimated one third of us carry the staphylococcus bacteria at any one time, and two per cent of that third carry the MRSA form.

While we are healthy and our immune system is strong, the bacteria is harmless and quickly shed by our body (either washed off or dying within a week) but before this happens it can be passed on to others who then become carriers.

Now it appears humans have passed this bacteria on to pets and the pets are passing it back to us - what experts are calling the ' flipflop' effect.

'When you handle an animal you acquire organisms from it and that will include bacteria,' explains Professor David Williams, head of dermatology at the Royal Veterinary College in London.

'They will also acquire organisms from you."
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