With the rapidly improving living conditions, more and more people begin to raise pets. Pets not only can offer benefits to cardiovascular function, enhance the immunity, early warning health problem, but also enhance the owners’ self-confidence and decrease their depression. However, raising pets without scientific understanding and suitable methods becomes a challenge to the human health. The outbreaks of atypical pneumonia and avian influenza prompt us to pay high attention to the biosafety and the possible spread of zoonoses. This article will focus on the relationship between pets and human health.
Pets have many positive effects on human health. In accordance with CDC’s data, having a pet can play a great role in reducing blood pressure, reducing cholesterol levels, reducing glycerol tri (acid) ester levels, alleviating solitude, increasing outdoor activity and intimate interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, research by veterinary experts and biologists has found that contacting with pets can change mood, reduce illness and pain, and improve people’s physical and mental function. The health survey at Harvard University suggests that people who feed their pets generally have a plateau to blood pressure, a steadier heart rate and a more peaceful mind. [1] In addition, pets are especially effective for children, the elderly and those living alone. Pets help improve children’s immunity and help them get out of the shadow of psychological trauma. Pets can also bring more vitality to the owner by accompanying these lonely people. And in some cases, pets can help people detect many diseases early by their superior olfaction.
However, there are also some health risks associated with keeping pets. Pet dogs may bite people and cause injury. Pet barking disturbs people. Pets defecate in public places will pollute the environment. Large pets are fierce and may threaten people’s safety. Abandoned pets will become stray animals. What’s more, pet disease, such as rabies, bird flu, toxoplasmosis, taeniasis, brucellosis, and the negative effect on the human health made by aspergillosis and psittacosis which only just spread by respiratory tract can not allowed to be ignored. According to the WHO classification by 1, 415 kinds of human diseases, 62% of them belong to the man beast comorbidities, and this proportion increasing over time. Information statistic shows that there are over 250 infectious disease and parasitic animal diseases in that world, of which 89 are important. More than half of 200 animal infections can be transmitted to humans, and more than 100 parasitic diseases can also infect humans. [2] For example, pet‐owning households had 1.83 times the risk (95% CI = 1.53, 2.20) of finding ticks crawling on and 1.49 times the risk (95% CI = 1.20, 1.84) of finding ticks attached to household members compared to households without pets. This large evaluation of pet ownership, human tick encounters and tickborne diseases shows that pet owners, whether of cats or dogs, are at increased risk of encountering ticks and suggests that pet owners are at an increased risk of developing tickborne disease. [3]
Pets are human friends, and their effects on human health are both good and bad. Only by raising pets scientifically and actively preventing pet diseases can a harmonious life with pets be created.
Reference List
- XIA Xian-zhu. Pets and human health [J]. Chinese Journal of Comparative Medicine, 2010, 20(11, 12):5-7.
- 张洪亮, 单虎. Pet-Derived Zoonoses [J]. Chinese Journal of Comparative Medicine, 2010, Z1:150-152.
- E. H. Jones, A. F. Hinckley, S. A. Hook, J. I. Meek, B. Backenson, K. J. Kugeler, K. A. Feldman. Pet ownership increases human risk of encountering ticks [J].ZOONOSES PUBLIC HLTH, 2018, 65(1):74-79.
