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Pet frogs can transmit salmonella
CDC investigation suggests people think twice about owning common aquarium species
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.
“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
