As we continue to explore the topic of how parasites are dangerous to our dear pets, today we look at flukes and how they affect our pets, the interesting it about flukes is, they exist in different forms as they affect different parts of the pet's body.
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Let's start with speaking about liver flukes, in dogs, Heterobilharzia Americana is a parasitic infection causing infection in dogs, HA in dogs comes with symptoms that include, weight loss, lethargy, diarrhea, vomiting, and polyuria. In some rare cases, gastrointestinal malabsorption and liver failure have also been reported.
Platynosomum concinnum* is the most common type of liver flukes found in cats, and it is usually found in hot, humid climates. They get infected through the consumption of an already infected animal, and a lizard is a good example of such an animal. Liver flukes are usually common amongst animals who live in geographically endemic areas, especially those allowed outdoors since they have access to the hunting and consumption of an infected animal. When a cat gets infected with liver flukes, it moves into the gallbladder, bile ducts, and gall bladder of the pet where they begin to cause severe inflammation and damage.
If liver flukes are left untreated, it can cause serious liver failure and death eventually. Most times, cats can control liver fluke infections, and this makes them not show symptoms, but with the existence of several numbers of flukes, symptoms will come forth and most likely begin to show after 2-4 months of an infection episode. It comes in the form of, jaundice, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, reduced appetite, lethargy, weight loss, and enlarged abdomen.
It is interesting to know that the life cycle of liver fluke is an indirect one, meaning they require an intermediate host for survival and infection of cats. The eggs of liver fluke are consumed by a snail when they are found in the feces of an infected animal. The sporocysts are released by the snail, and consumed by host animals, therefore causing an infection. After consumption has happened, liver flukes move from the intestine of the cat into the bile ducts, gallbladder, and liver where they then grow and reproduce. The eggs that they later make are shed through the stool of the cat. As a result of the complex life cycle of the liver fluke, it would take about three months for the liver fluke to be shed through the feces, after shedding, it can be consumed again by snails, and then the life cycle begins afresh.
Nanophyetus salmincola is an intestinal fluke contracted when dogs consume raw or improperly prepared fish or other infected animals. The young flukes move through the organs of the definitive host, which includes the lungs and diaphragm before they get to the small intestine.
Flukes that affect the gallbladder and bile ducts are called, hepatic flukes causing mild to severe fibrosis. Mild infections may pass by without being noticed, but in a serious infection case, progressive weakness would lead to coma, complete exhaustion, coma, and death eventually. When these flukes in the bile duct stay for a long time, they begin to cause epithelial hyperplasia and fibrosis of the duct wall.
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