MONDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- A woman and her dog were infected with bovine tuberculosis, demonstrating that human infection with the bacterium can still occur, according to a case report in the January issue of Thorax.

Dinesh Shrikrishna, from Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, United Kingdom, and colleagues describe the case of a 42-year-old British woman who was found to be infected with Mycobacterium bovis after presenting with a history of general malaise and mucopurulent cough. The woman had no history of unpasteurized milk consumption, immunodeficiency or recent travel abroad, but had worked as a veterinary nurse and had taken an injured badger to a veterinarian.

The patient's dog also presented with a persistent cough and was also found to be infected with the same strain of M. bovis and euthanized, the researchers report. The patient's 12-year-old asymptomatic daughter, who had not received the Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine and, like her mother, was not exposed to any sources of bovine tuberculosis, had a positive tuberculin skin test and was given chemoprophylaxis, the report indicates.

"This case demonstrates that human infection with M. bovis acquired in the United Kingdom is not a disease of the past," Shrikrishna and colleagues conclude. "The isolation of an identical genotype of M. bovis from a pet dog and its owner, in a rural area where the same strain is often recovered from cattle and badgers, identifies a low, but ongoing, public health risk."

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