Can you imagine if there was a disease in Texas that could infect people even if they never left their own house or yard and never contacted other people? If you could take a tasty medicine once a month to make sure you didn’t get the disease, would you do it?
That’s the situation with dogs and heartworms. Heartworm infection is endemic to this part of the country and it is spread by mosquitoes. Adult heartworms live in the right side of the heart and produce “baby” heartworms that are microscopic. When a mosquito bites a dog with this early stage (called microfilaria), these microscopic worms go right into the mosquito with the blood. After maturing a little further in the mosquito, they are ready to infect another host – when the mosquito bites they swim out of the mosquito into another dog. They continue to mature in this host and ultimately find their way to the right side of the heart where they can continue the life cycle. Amazingly, considering the success of this parasite, they cannot complete their life cycle without going through this mosquito stage.
The good news for dogs is that very effective heartworm preventatives are available. Most are flavored medications given once monthly. They work on the stage of the parasite that initially enters from the mosquito and for a couple more stages of the parasites life cycle. This allows for the administration once monthly rather than daily. This simple step can literally be life saving since the heart and lung disease that heartworms cause can easily be deadly.
Even for dogs that take heartworm preventative regularly, it is important to do annual blood screening. Heartworm disease starts silently with no symptoms in the early months of infection. A positive result found prior to the onset of symptoms, carries a far better prognosis than the dog that is showing symptoms of heart and lung disease. Treatment can be very effective at removing the parasite, but changes to the heart and lungs can be permanent.
So, the most important part of heartworm disease is prevention. At Murphy Road Animal Hospital, we try to make keeping up with prevention as easy as possible. From stickers for the family calendar, to e-mail reminders, there are tools available to help busy families continue this important health care step. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help protect your family pets from this very preventable disease.
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