Is a human bite worse than a dog bite?
My name is Page. I am a student at the University of North Texas in the US and I love the podcast of the Naked Scientists.
Is it true that a dog's mouth is cleaner than
Is a human bite worse than a dog bite?
My name is Page. I am a student at the University of North Texas in the US and I love the podcast of the Naked Scientists.
Is it true that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a humans? Or is it that the normal flora of a human more virulent than a dog's normal flora?
We posed this question to Dr Nick Brown, Consultant Medical Microbiologist, and Andreas Karas, also a Consultant Microbiologist, both from the Health Protection Agency...
Nick - Well, you might think that the dog bite would be the more dangerous and certainly of course, in terms of trauma, and particularly if related to attacks, they can be very nasty.
But, actually, in terms of infections, human bites have a very high incidence of complications. And so, many people would actually say that human bites are nastier than dog bites.
All of our mouths, and all animal mouths, are full of bacteria all the time and the sorts of organisms that cause this infection are the things like Streptococci and Staphylococci particularly.
But the importance of the bite, of course, is that, because of the teeth and the trauma that's associated with it, then those organisms can be introduced deep into the tissues where they can replicate and cause infections.
Andreas - The question about whether a dog bite or human bite is worse would depend largely on where in the world you are.
If you were in the developing world, rabies becomes a major factor and you would much rather be bitten by a human where rabies is much less likely. If you were in another part of the world, it would depend a lot on the site of the bite. Human b