If patients present with flu-like symptoms and bruising, it’s worth asking them about pets, based on the case of a man who died from sepsis after being infected with bacteria when licked by his dog.

Doctors from the Red Cross Hospital in Bremen, Germany, have reported the case of a 63-year-old previously healthy man who died from multiorgan failure due to sepsis caused by Capnocytphaga canimorsus, which is usually transmitted through dog bites rather than licks.

The man had presented with a three-day history of fever and progressive dyspnoea.

Further, the day before he had developed facial petechiae, myalgia of the lower extremities with dysaesthesia of his lower right leg, they wrote in the European Journal of Case Reports in Internal Medicine.