H1N1 and Your Pet

Risk of pets contracting or passing on the virus

H1N1 and Animals

 by

 Jeff Grognet, DVM, BSc (Agr)

The H1N1 virus has created quite a stir and there has been a mountain of information, and misinformation, especially over the Internet in the last few weeks. Specifically, there is as lot of confusion on the role that pets play. Can they become infected? Can they pass the infection to people? Let's look into this. 

The first super flu virus we heard about was avian flu, diagnosed in southeast Asia, in 1997. The worldwide pandemic that was foretold never materialized. The virus kept turning up in birds, and it did spread to a few people, but the worldwide epidemic never happened. 

This H5N1 influenza virus is named on the H and N system. The letters refer to two proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, on the viral surface.

In 2005, a canine influenza virus, H3N8, was discovered in racing Greyhounds in Florida. It triggered a mild upper respiratory disease similar to kennel cough, however, a few dogs came down with fatal pneumonia. A vaccine against this virus was recently introduced in the US. The origin of H3N8 is thought to be a mutated equine virus. Like any flu virus, you can't pick it up by eating meat from an infected animal. 

The recent outbreak of H1N1 is called swine flu because its discovery was linked to pigs. It is a mix of human, pig, and bird flu viruses, so the official name for the virus is now influenza A/H1N1. 

The ability of flu viruses to spread between species is based on viral receptors, mainly found in the host's upper respiratory tract, that allow the virus to invade. If a species does not have the right receptors, the virus can't infect. 

This means that most viruses can only infect one or possibly a limited number of species. Avian flu was an exception, infecting a multitude of birds as well as pigs, people, and cats. The key is that H5N1 is not easily transmissible from birds to people; person to person movement would be a rare event. 

If your family has H1N1, is your pet at risk? So far, at the time of this writing, it has only moved into some pigs, ferrets, birds (turkeys in Canada), and one cat in the US. And, the transmission has been from infected people to animals. 

But, we also know that influenza viruses are constantly changing. Their ability to infect other species could change. Authorities are monitoring these viruses along with instances of human exposure very closely.

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