Worm Advise - Spirocerca Lupi

A letter was published in a local newspaper recently about a dog contracting the Spirocera worm. The following is an article I published on 8ight's wordpress blog which gives guardians more vital information.

Spirocerca

There is an increase of a silent killer worm in dogs. It is often only found after it is too late to treat the disease and its best to reduce the incidences by trying to prevent it.

Spirocerca Lupi

Spirocerca is a nematode that forms a nodule if the pets oesophagus. This often becomes cancerous and causes problems swallowing.

A dung beetle would ingest worm eggs while working with and rolling these infected faeces. The eggs hatch, releasing larvae, which mature to the infective stage within the beetle.

A dog may then eat the intermediate hosts, the beetles, or small animals such as mice, rats, lizards or birds., thereby ingesting the larvae. These little animals can carry worm larvae which your dog ingests when eating them.
Once the dog has eaten a beetle or other intermediary carrying larvae of

Spirocerca lupi, the larvae are released within the dog’s stomach during the digestive process.

The larvae are released into your dog’s digestive tract, after which they move through the intestinal walls and into your dog’s bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, the worm larvae will migrate through out your dog’s body resulting in disease.
The larvae reach the aorta (the main artery in body) via small arteries that drain the stomach.. In the main artery they mature, a process which takes about three months weakening the walls and causing aneurisms, after which they pass through the wall of the artery into the wall of the oesophagus.
In the oesophagus wall they form a swelling, known as a granuloma, in which the worms live.
The worms produce eggs through a small hole in the granuloma that are then passed in the faeces.

As the worms grow bigger the granuloma grows bigger. One obvious problem is in swallowing. Now sometimes, dogs will show signs of fever, vomit, retch or regurgitate due to difficulty swallowing, poor appetite, weight loss or lethargy. Other times, it may be more subtle. Dogs may just be off their food; lick their lips; cry when swallowing; ‘cough’ or ‘retch’. Some dogs just lose weight but continue eating. Other dogs become anaemic because some nodules may bleed, which can cause a very dark or even black stool due to the presence of blood in the stool. These nodules may turn cancerous and the cancer can spread to the lungs. Sudden death can occur if an aneurism in the aorta ruptures, causing your dog to bleed out in seconds.

Some Consequences Of Spirocercosis

**Dogs react differently to these nodules: some dogs, especially fox terriers, show signs of severe irritation with even small nodules (gagging, swallowing, retching) whereas other dogs may show no symptoms until the nodules are large.**

Apart from the manifestations and consequences mentioned, the worm can also:

Kill patients by damaging the aorta

Obstruct the oesophagus

Trigger the immune system

Migrate to places other than those expected

Granulomata can transform into cancers. Usually malignant osteosarcomas, which can spread to other organs, especially the lungs.

Secondary problems

There are certain very serious and life-threatening secondary problems.

“One must distinguish between swelling in the wall of the oesophagus, and what may happen in the aorta,” notes Prof. Boomker. “Damage can occur to the aorta before a granuloma forms in the wall of the oesophagus.”

A granuloma on the oesophagus would cause difficulty in breathing and swallowing.

“In long-standing cases, the granuloma can become cancerous. In such cases it can either remain in the oesophagus and become a fibrosarcoma, or spread to the long bones in the body (i.e. the tibia, femur, radius, ulna) and form an osteosarcoma, which is not easily treatable,” he points out.

If the worms have damaged the wall of the aorta (main artery), a weakening can occur that develops into an aneurism. If the damage is not too extensive, aneurisms form and months could pass before they rupture; they may also not rupture.

However, in the event of extensive damage to the aorta, the aneurism could rupture or burst, causing the death of the dog within minutes due to massive bleeding.

How Is It Diagnosed?

Firstly, the vet must suspect it.

Given its propensity for bizarre manifestations, this can sometimes be hard. Nonetheless, it can be diagnosed in most cases by a combination of careful questioning, chest X-rays, fibre scope (endoscopic) evaluation of the oesophagus and stomach and special faecal flotation techniques. Sometimes, the diagnosis is just a surprise.

How Is It Treated?

the best treatment is infact prevention.

At the time of first writing this article the problem in treatment is that there was no drug registered as effective against S. Lupi in South Africa.

There are some drugs that do kill Spirocerca. However, once your dog has been diagnosed, the appropriate treatment will be decided by your pooch’s vet.

The treatment process is lengthy, initially starting with daily or weekly treatments for 6 to 8 weeks, then moving onto monthly treatments for several months. If your dog is left untreated it will eventually succumb to the disease. The earlier the treatment is started, the more successful it is.

According to the study Milbemicycin which is found in the Milbemax dewormer and also in ProgramPlus can have an effect against Spirocerca.

They also seem to control infections if used regularly. Advocate flea and dewormer spot-on also seems to have some control on Spirocerca. There is a proprietary cattle parasiticide called doramectin. This drug appears to be effective by either injection or by mouth but is not registered for use in dogs.

What do I do if one of my dogs has been diagnosed but I have others at home?

The ideal situation would be to scope each of your dogs. If this is not possible due to financial constraints then your dogs can be placed on preventative medication, if they appear healthy.

Preventative medication is ideal for all animals in the household. Especially if one dog has been exposed to this nasty worm, then there is a chance that your other dogs may have also been exposed. Prevention Keeping the garden clear of dog faeces will help in reducing the number of dung beetles.

Unfortunately there is no registered treatment or prevention for Spirocerca.

There does seem to be a response to monthly treatment with Advocate or milbemycin (Program Plus or Milbemax) and until further research has been done it is recommended that all dogs be put on a monthly treatment from a young age.

**Deworming your dog monthly is the preferred method of controlling all other worms (round and tapeworm) as their lifecycles are about 21 days long and monthly deworming prevents them from maturing and laying eggs, contaminating your environment. This disease has not been documented to affect humans, and only rarely cats. So take the bull by the horns with this devastating disease and get your dogs checked by your veterinarian and start a monthly preventative program.**

Heartworm… Don’t Get Yourself In A Knott!

In KZN, there is the added problem that a normally innocuous heartworm may be inhabiting your dog’s circulatory system at the same time that he or she is affected by Spirocerca.

The treatment for Spirocerca will also kill the heartworm. This can sometimes cause an anaphylactic reaction in the pet and some pets can react quite badly and need other treatment.

Blood tests can check for the heartworm before starting treatment for Spirocerca.

As an additional survey to this post please comment if one of your pets has been diagnosed with Spiroserca Lupi – add a brief description of their story and say which area you are from. (If you are from an organisation please estimate the amount of animals you have treated recently along with your area). I am interested in the prevalence in each province.

Forward and share with your friends who have dogs.

**Apon further research I found that Spirocerca lupi is more common in South Africa’s summer rainfall areas.**

Research:

1 South African Veterinary Association: Compiled by: Dr Liesel van der Merwe,

2 Valley Farm Animal Hospital, Pretoria

3 Published Article Inanda Vets – user files Pdf File

4 Dog World Featured Article courtesy of University of PTA

5 I noticed that most “breed specific” groups (eg: Beagle SA, Husky Rescue) also have info on their websites.

my original article: https://infinity8eight.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/worm-advice-spirocerca-lupi/

Contact me via 8ight page Or 8ightinfinity@gmail.com To book your appointment. This way we avoid the "other" inboxes. Hope you have a beautiful day. 💙 Love, light, purrs and wags Di xoxo Inbox me on 8ight page to book for communications: new pet introductions, behaviour, health, missing pet trackings