It is widely believed that dog saliva is a natural antiseptic and useful for healing wounds, both on animals and a person. We decided to check how true this is.
The benefits of dog saliva are often written in the media and social networks. For example, about the saliva of dogs as a natural antiseptic, the site wrote Life.ru: In this article, the veterinarian expert argued that "he could not transmit any infection through saliva." The same expert repeated these words in an interview "Evening Moscow". Similar abstracts are often found in social networks And on forumsdedicated to pets. On Pikabu The post about the healing properties of dog saliva has collected more than 35 thousand views, on Zen - More than 21 thousand.
The most detailed study of the properties of dog saliva Spent In 1990, specialists of the University of California Benjamin Hart and Karen Powell. This work is still quoted by other scientists. The purpose of the study was to study the bactericidal effects of saliva on wounds. Scientists have found that dog saliva in some cases helps to cope with bacteria of dogs themselves - for example, with Escherichia coli and streptococcus of dogs (Streptococcus canis). At the same time, saliva does not have a significant impact on the pseudoscientific wand (pseudomonas aeruginosa) and coagulant -positive staphylococci.
That is, the authors of the study determined that dog saliva in some cases helps healing wounds in dogs. In the case of wounds, people are more difficult. In 2017, Japanese doctors in detail Studied The case of a person’s infection with streptococcus of dogs that enters the patient's body after a domestic dog was bitten by him. The authors of the work clarify that the transfer of this infection from a dog to a person is a very rare case, but in the last part of the study, they draw attention to the fact that owners of pets always risk infecting various diseases from their pets.
Among other infections, for example, pasteurelleosis is found. In 2021, Taiwanese infectious disease specialists Described case of the disease endocarditis 21-year-old patient. The causative agent of the infection was the Pasteurella Multocida stick, which enters the body from a pet.
The most sad case was Fixed scientists in Austria. The 41-year-old patient injured his leg and then decided to let his dog lick the wound. He later said that he regularly did this with his wounds, as he was sure of the healing properties of dog saliva. He entered the hospital with a septic shock and progressive tissue necrosis. Doctors saved the patient’s life, but for this he had to amputate both legs below the knee, several phalanges of the fingers and part of the nose. The cause of all these disasters was the bacterium Capnocytophaga Canimorsus, which has fallen into the body of a patient with a saliva of a dog. For animals, it is harmless, but under certain circumstances (weakened immunity, entering an open wound, liver disease with alcohol abuse) can be dangerous for a person. In the case of an Austrian patient, all these factors came together together.
Finally, the greatest risk when dog saliva enters the human body is a rabies. World Health Organization (WHO) warnsthat the infection can be transmitted in the case of "direct contact of the saliva of an infected animal with mucous membranes or fresh wounds on human skin." Rabies are transferred by bats, wild animals, but in 99% of cases a person is infected from home dogs, WHO states.
Thus, we can conclude that dog saliva helps to heal wounds mainly in dogs themselves and not in all cases. As for the treatment of human wounds with the help of dog saliva, as medical research and clinical practice show, this is not the best idea: the risk of aggravating the situation as a result of infection becomes much higher.
Most of the untruth
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please inform us of this, highlighting the text with an error and by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
