News Briefs for the Week of October 14, 2002
By Marcella Durand for Cat Facts
- Pets Relieve More Stress Than Friends or Spouse
Next time you have a big fight with your significant other, instead of heading over to your best friend's house with boxes of chocolate and tissues, try heading to your local animal shelter.
The results of a new study at the State University of New York, Buffalo, suggest that pets are better at relieving stress than friends-or even spouses. The study looked at 240 couples, half with one pet and half with no pets. One person in each couple was given a stressful task-either some tough mental math or holding their hand in ice water. Pet owners performed their tasks alone, with their pets and with their spouses. Petless subjects performed their tasks alone and with a close friend.
People who had their pet with them during the stressful event showed the smallest increases in blood pressure and heart rate, and returned to normal most quickly. The presence of a pet was a better stress buster than a friend or a spouse. The study found no difference between the supportive effects of cats and dogs.
- Toxoplasmosis: Don't Blame the Cat
Most obstetricians have a standard warning about pregnant women and kitty's litter box, telling them to avoid all contact with the box-and sometimes even all contact with cats-for fear of exposure to toxoplasmosis (an infection that can cause miscarriages and harm a fetus). But a new article in The Archives of Internal Medicine says those fears are exaggerated. "Casual contact with a cat is not going to expose you" to toxoplasmosis, says Dr. Jeffrey Kravetz of the Yale School of Medicine, one of the authors of the article.
About 3,000 women in America do transmit toxoplasmosis each year to their fetuses, but the cause is much more likely to be contact with contaminated meat or digging in infected soil. According to the article, about 8 percent of beef and 20 percent of pork carries the toxoplasmosis microbe. In fact, it's common enough that many adults have already been exposed to toxoplasmosis and developed an immunity. Your doctor can test for this immunity if you are pregnant, to help put your mind at ease.
Kravetz says indoor cats are unlikely to carry the infection, and older outdoor cats are less likely to transmit the disease than young cats. Pregnant women with cats should change the litter often, and wear gloves when they do, but should also take precautions when handling raw meat and digging in the garden.
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