

This bond with pets has strengthened over the past 50 years. These benefits include social development and improved quality of life associated with companionship, and inspiration afforded by pets ( 4, 5). Human–companion animal interactions have a wide range of benefits to human health.

Over millennia, cats and dogs have played an integral role in many aspects of human life. This review focuses on the 2 major small companion animals: the domestic cat and dog. Companion animals encompass a spectrum that includes arthropods, caged birds, cats, chinchillas, dogs, ferrets, fish, guinea pigs, hamsters, horses, mice, poultry, rabbits, rats, and reptiles. In some cultures, certain companion animal species also provide a food source.
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The aims of this review are to define and quantify the role of companion animals in the human domestic and peridomestic environment, highlight the major companion animal zoonoses and the potential for emergence of new human infections transmitted from these species, emphasize the lack of global infectious disease surveillance in these species against the current background of human and production animal surveillance, and suggest how to address this major One Health deficiency in the future.Ĭompanion animals have been domesticated by humans and kept primarily for social benefit (i.e., companionship, showing) or utilitarian purposes (i.e., hunting, military, or police activity support for blind or deaf persons guarding and herding), They might be bred or wild caught with the intention of keeping them in the domestic environment. Many systems are in place nationally or globally to monitor human and production animal (and to a lesser extent, wild animal) disease ( 2), but major gaps in surveillance remain, particularly the lack of a surveillance infrastructure that includes companion animals.įrom a One Health perspective, companion animals can serve as sources of zoonotic infections, as intermediate hosts between wildlife reservoirs and humans, or as sentinel or proxy species for emerging disease surveillance ( 3). To achieve this goal, it is essential that global resources be allocated for more effective disease surveillance and reporting schemes that incorporate environmental, human, and veterinary health professionals.

Such zoonotic infections could be of the following types: infections transmitted directly from animals to humans vector-borne infections in which an animal or human is infected by the vector or infections in which animals act as a reservoir for disease transmission, including having the potential for contaminating human food and water sources.Ī key goal of the evolving One Health paradigm includes surveillance of infectious diseases in domestic and wild animals to anticipate emergence of new zoonoses and protect humans. An area of One Health that has garnered much attention has been the emergence or reemergence of infectious disease, and the finding that ≈75% of newly reported human infections have emerged, and are therefore likely to continue to emerge, from an animal reservoir ( 1). A major focus of One Health has been on infectious diseases shared by humans, production animals (e.g., cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry), companion animals, and wildlife in the context of ecosystems and the physical environment. One Health is an initiative that seeks greater integration of human and veterinary medicine in areas as diverse as infectious disease control and comparative and translational medical research.

Increasingly, the concept of One Health is recognized as a valuable paradigm for global health management.
