Sleeping next to pets could be dangerous

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8-25-05 Hotel Monoco, Chicago DOG DAYS of SUMMER series... Hotel doggie Stevie Nix lays on the rooms king-size bed. The hotel offers rooms for guests with dogs. [KEITH HALE/Sun-Times]

Updated: February 25, 2011 12:30AM

Sleeping with your pets can make you sick.

It’s rare, but it happens. That’s why good hygiene means keeping Fluffy and Spot next to the bed, not on it, two experts in animal-human disease transmission say in a forthcoming paper.

More than 60 percent of American households have a pet, and depending on the survey, 14 percent to 62 percent let their dogs and cats sleep with them. That can be dangerous, says Bruno Chomel, a professor at the University of California-Davis school of veterinary medicine.

“There are private places in the household, and I think our pets should not go beyond next to the bed,” Chomel says. “Having a stuffed animal in your bed is fine, not a real one.”

Chomel and co-author Ben Sun, chief veterinarian with the California Department of Public Health, did an extensive search of medical journals and turned up a hair-raising lists of possible pathogens.

There’s plague (yes, bubonic plague, i.e. the Black Death); chagas disease, which can cause life-threatening heart and digestive system disorders; and cat-scratch disease, which can also come from being licked by infected cats. Gannett News Service