Abstract
Many studies show that keeping cats and dogs has a positive impact on humans’ physical and mental health and quality of life. The existence of this “pet phenomenon” is now widely discussed because other studies performed recently have demonstrated a negative impact of owning pets or no impact at all. The main problem of many studies was the autoselection–participants were informed about the aims of the study during recruitment and later likely described their health and wellbeing according to their personal beliefs and wishes, not according to their real status. To avoid this source of bias, we did not mention pets during participant recruitment and hid the pet-related questions among many hundreds of questions in an 80-minute Internet questionnaire. Results of our explorative study performed on a sample of 10,858 subjects showed that liking dogs has a weak positive association with quality of life. However, keeping pets, especially cats, and even more being injured by pets, were strongly negatively associated with many facets of quality of life. Our data also confirmed that infection by the cat parasite Toxoplasma had a very strong negative effect on quality of life, especially on mental health. However, the infection was not responsible for the observed negative effects of keeping pets, as these effects were much stronger in 1,527 Toxoplasma-free subjects than in the whole population. Any cross-sectional study cannot discriminate between a cause and an effect. However, because of the large and still growing popularity of keeping pets, the existence and nature of the reverse pet phenomenon deserve the outmost attention.
Highlights
According to 2016 estimates, about 61 million dogs and 66 million cats are currently kept in the EU and this number is likely still growing [1]
We studied the association of pet-related variables and health and wellbeing in a subpopulation of 343 men and 1,184 women who had been tested negatively for toxoplasmosis
The effects of animal-related injuries might seem to be relatively weak; their strength was comparable with the effects of four well-known risk factors, i.e., smoking, consuming alcohol, consuming illegal drugs, and high body mass index
Summary
According to 2016 estimates, about 61 million dogs and 66 million cats are currently kept in the EU and this number is likely still growing [1]. Keeping dogs and cats is believed to have many positive effects on the wellbeing and health of humans. Many papers have been published showing that contact with pets has positive effects on individuals facing. The effects of keeping dogs and cats on health and quality of life
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