In addition to mosquitoes being animals that suck human blood as food or creating annoyance by flying around our ears, causing irritation, many people may not know that “mosquitoes” are also animals that are carriers of serious diseases.Like heartworm disease that can also be transmitted to our dogs. When our beloved dogs have heartworm disease, what are the symptoms? And how can we prevent or treat it? Let's take a look at some basic information.
Heartworm Disease Caused by Dirofilaria immitis, it is a common disease in dogs, sometimes found in cats, but rarely in humans. This disease is transmitted by mosquitoes. Infection occurs when mosquitoes feed on the blood of dogs that have larvae of this disease, and the larvae develop inside the mosquito. When mosquitoes bite other dogs, they release infective larvae into the dog they bite. Adult heartworms usually live in the heart and nearby blood vessels. The fact that they are often found in the heart is why the disease is called heartworm disease.
Heartworms are also common in warm and tropical climates around the world, including Thailand. Therefore, if you raise your dog in an area where the disease is prevalent, your dog is more likely to get sick with this disease.
Symptoms of Heartworm Disease in Dogs
Although dogs are infected with heartworms when they are young, most tend to show symptoms when they are older, that is, over 4 years old. It has been found that many dogs infected with heartworms will have initial symptoms such as dry cough, lethargy, easy fatigue, shortness of breath, physical exhaustion. Some will have blood when coughing. In the later stages, swelling and ascites will occur and eventually die.
Some dogs infected with heartworms may not show obvious symptoms depending on the number of adult heartworms. If there are few adults, there will be no symptoms. But if there are many adults, it will cause circulatory problems. Symptoms can be observed in some breeds of dogs, such as Alsatians. The dog will tire easily, pant when exercised, and some dogs will even have a heart attack and die.
Heartworm Disease Treatment in Dogs
The veterinarian will thoroughly examine the dog’s health, including checking blood test results to check liver and kidney function. In some cases, a chest x-ray may be necessary to check the condition of the heart and lungs to see if the dog can be injected with heartworm killers. If the dog is not in good health, it is necessary to provide nutrition first. If the dog is in good health to be injected with the medicine, treatment should be given immediately. It is recommended that the dog’s health be examined before injecting this medicine to treat the disease, because the medicine used to inject heartworm killers is highly toxic.
Dogs that have been vaccinated against heartworm disease may die because the dead adult heartworms block the blood vessels. Therefore, dogs that have been vaccinated should be monitored for at least 2-6 weeks to monitor symptoms.
After approximately 4 weeks after the injection of the adult larvae, the dog should be given food or injections to destroy the larvae and given preventive food or injections according to the program recommended by the veterinarian to prevent the dog from getting this disease again.
Control and prevention
Since Thailand is in the tropics and there are mosquitoes all year round, it may be difficult to prevent mosquitoes from biting dogs. Prevention methods must be used by taking medicine or injecting drugs to destroy the larvae in the dog's blood so that they do not develop into adults in the dog's heart. However, injecting drugs to prevent heartworms is more convenient and economical than giving medicine because if the dog is given medicine, it must be given every month. But if given injections, it must be given every 2 months, starting from the dog being 3 months old.
To enter the heartworm vaccination program in dogs, the first step is to check the blood for heartworm larvae. If no larvae are found, the prevention program can be entered. However, if heartworm larvae are found, it means that there are adults in the heart. An injection must be given to destroy the adults first, and then the prevention program can be entered.
For dogs that want to enter the heartworm prevention program, but have received heartworm prevention medication but have not continued to receive it according to the program recommended by the veterinarian, or have used heartworm prevention medication to eliminate ticks and scabies, in both cases, it is necessary to perform an immunological examination to find antigens of adult heartworms in the blood first. Because even if the blood test does not find larvae, there may still be adults in the heart. If the test result is negative, it means that there are no adult heartworms. You can enter the prevention program immediately. But if the result is positive, it means that there are adults in the heart. You must be injected with an injection to destroy the adults first. Then enter the prevention program.
Currently, the medicine used to treat heartworm disease is very expensive. Therefore, it is better to prevent and control this disease.
Read other articles Don't be confident, dogs and cats with anemia are more dangerous than you think.