Brucella Canis in Veterinary Professionals

Steve Leonard — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:18:42 GMT

Hi,

This is a sensitive subject and is troubling a lot of small animal practitioners currently with regards what is the risk to our teams, clients and patients.

I have a colleague who has kindly consented to having me sharing her situation with you as it highlights how little we know about this disease in people. She had minimal contact with a dog who subsequently tested positive late last year (who knows how many other unknown carriers she has done dentals, spays etc on).

Unfortunately, earlier this year she became quite unwell with a fever. She was pregnant and tragically miscarried. Her GP has a sister who is a vet and was happy to test for B.canis. She had high serology results and a positive PCR result.

Weeks later she still is positive on both tests and her infectious disease specialist has told her the only people he is seeing this in is pretty much always veterinary professionals.

Treatment is not without significant risk to her health. She would need to hospitalised for IV antibiotics that carries significant risk of AKI and then possibly up to 6 months of oral tx. Elimination is not certain.

She is not an isolated case and there are potentially lots of chronic / subclinical cases out there. Her consultant stated he has approached BVA and BSAVA for funding to do some more research into the situation because wider finding doesn't seem to be available (as it affects such a limited cohort - i.e. us). This funding doesn't seem to have been forthcoming but I am not sure when the approach was made.

Obviously, all our first thoughts were that in endemic countries they must see it all the time however according to her specialist is that surveillance is pretty much non-existence as low-priority in countries with plenty of other significant health issues to contend with.

In addition, like me, many of you may be blood donors and it struck me that is there a potential risk to recipients that hasn't been addressed here?

My colleague is well, thankfully and coping admirably with these difficult decisions regarding how to proceed. I think it has affected all of us who know her and I'm sure some of you also have friends and colleagues who may be facing a similar situation.

We don't want a knee-jerk panic response so I thought I would speak to you all here as you are an 'evidenced based' group that will give this proper thought. Also I know in many of your referral centres and universities there are people looking at the canine side, and possibly the human side already. If there is, it would help my colleagues to know that is the case. If not then maybe we can try and get some data and possibly approach BVA/BSAVA again with an idea of helping quantify the risk a little better.

Your thoughts gratefully received.

Steve

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Brucella Canis in Veterinary Professionals