What is Heartworm Disease?
Heartworm disease is a serious infectious disease which often happen in pet cats and dogs. It will lead to lung disease, organ damage, heart disease and even death. The main route of transmission is bite of mosquito, which means that this disease is probably transmitted to human beings with weak immunity such as children, the elderly and pregnant women. Because the main host of heartworm disease is dog and the intermediate host is mosquito, worm has access to human through the bite of mosquito when they live with an infected dog. The reason why the worm called heartworm is that it always live in heart mostly in right heart and it will lead to heart failure.
What is the Transmission Process of Heartworm Disease?
Mature worms will produce microfilariae in the infected dog’s bloodstream. How does the microfilariae become larvae? It become larvae through the bite of mosquito. The microfilariae will become infective larvae after a few days since its entering mosquito. And then infective larvae will enter another dog through the bite of the infective mosquito. After about 6 months, larvae will grow mature and release microfilariae in the newly infected dog and it will be transmitted to another dog through the bite of mosquito. There is one thing animal lovers should notice that heartworm disease will not be transmitted without the bite of mosquito.
The Symptoms Of Heartworm Disease and the Ways to Test Heartworm Disease
Early stage: there is no symptoms or apparent symptoms in the dog, which means that there are a little larvae in the dog.
Middle stage: Occasional cough and tiredness after some activities will happen. After a few months,frequent cough, breath with difficulty and palpitation will appear to the dog. These signals means that larvae grows rapidly.
Later stage: blood will flow back to dog’s heart because a large number of worms block the flowing and the most effective way to removing the worms is surgery. However, surgery is very dangerous for the dog.
So it is vital to test the heartworm disease of dogs in an appropriate way. Antigen test are used widely in heartworm test. It can test the larvae in the bloodstream , but it can only test the dog with five more months of infection. Other tests can detect microfilariae of the bloodstream of dogs. For heartworm tset kits, some biological companies have launched high-quality heartworm kits which can test worms rapid by practical screening.
Of course, to prevent the disease is significant. The easiest and most effective way is to keep the pet dogs clean.