Category: Parasitology

If you haven’t yet heard about canine leishmaniosis (Canl or CaniLeish), one thing is certain – you will, and very soon. Here’s why your vet might need to test for Leishmania, and what you can do to protect your dog when travelling abroad in high-risk areas.

In the same way, the malaria microbe Plasmodium uses mosquitoes to transfer between victims, Leishmania microbes use sandflies to infect dogs, other animals and humans.

Temperatures before climate warming

Before climate warming, British dog owners travelling in northern Europe could be sure that leishmaniosis wouldn’t be a problem. Blood-sucking sandflies need temperatures above 15.6^oC for at least three months of the year and can’t easily survive winters below 10^oC. The rise in average temperatures means that sandflies now range throughout Spain, Italy, southern and central France and even as far as the French coast of the English Channel.

Travelling with your dog in any of these countries means you need to be aware of the Leishmaniosis risk, especially as infection can be hard to spot, with symptoms developing only months or even years later.

Leishmania infiltrates the defending white blood cells

Once in your dog’s bloodstream, Leishmania infiltrates the defending white blood cells. Infected white cells carry the invaders into your dogs liver, spleen, bone marrow and lymph nodes. Eventually, your dog might develop skin sores or become more and more lethargic or feverish. Bleeding from the nose, lameness and kidney failure might also follow.

A number of treatments for Leishmaniosis are available but require long courses of medication. Large-scale attempts to control sandflies has so far proved ineffective, and the long-term effectiveness of the available CaniLeish vaccines is still uncertain.

Stay Safe – Steer Clear of Sandflies

For now, the most reliable protection your dog has when travelling in high-risk Leishmaniosis infected areas is you.

Keep your dog indoors at dusk and overnight when sandflies are feeding, especially during the high-risk months of April to November. Use mosquito nets on windows and doors and insecticide room sprays and collars as recommended by your vet. Avoid exposing your dog to the dank and stagnant swamps where sandflies breed.

If you think your dog might have been exposed to sandflies or shows symptoms of Leishmaniosis, visit your vet as soon as possible. Using a quick and accurate veterinary diagnostic test such as the reliable Megacor FASTest®LEISH your vet be able to put your mind at rest or get that crucial early start on the best course of treatment for your dog.

In the UK’s biggest ever study of ticks and tick-borne diseases, veterinary laboratory scientists at Bristol University signed up more than 1400 local vets and their canine clients.

Between April and July 2015, the months when parasitic ticks are most active, vets examined over 14,000 dogs reporting that nearly 30% were found to carry blood-sucking ticks potentially infected with deadly dog diseases including Lymes Disease, Anaplasmosis and the new threat, Canine Babesiosis.

Blood-sucking ticks are significantly more abundant and more widespread than 10 years ago

Fronted by BBC wildlife presenter and naturalist, Chris Packham, the project showed that blood-sucking ticks are significantly more abundant and more widespread than 10 years ago. Although relatively few ticks are infected with Anaplasma phagocytophilum – a blood parasite causing symptoms including fever, lethargy, vomiting and diarrhoea in dogs, the increasing number of ticks not only means an increased risk of Anaplasmosis, but also of Borrelia infection – the microbe that causes Borreliosis, commonly called Lymes Disease.

Lymes Disease can also cause serious illness in humans with between 2,000 and 3,000 people in England and Wales newly infected each year and about 1 in 8 picking up the disease while travelling abroad. Treatable with antibiotics if caught early enough, serious flu-like symptoms including painful joints, together with the nervous system and heart problems, can develop if treatment is delayed.

This new invader carries the potentially fatal dog disease Babesiosis which attacks the dog’s red blood cells

90% of dogs with ticks were found to have the common UK variety, Ixodes ricinus. However, a number of dogs in Southwest England and Wales were found to carry the continental Brown Tick, Dermacentor reticulatus. This new invader carries the potentially fatal dog disease Babesiosis which attacks the dog’s red blood cells and shows in red/brown urine, fever and jaundice.

Be aware, avoid and act

The best way to protect your dog from Borreliosis (Lymes Disease), Anaplasmosis and the new scourge, Babesiosis is to be aware, avoid and quickly act against carrying ticks:

• Aware: Tick and flea collars and skin treatments are a must to protect your dog – especially when out and about in tall grass and bracken shared with deer and livestock.
• Avoid: Always keep a look out for ticks in the home and inspect your dog thoroughly and regularly for small hard lumps that might be a tick.
• Act: Your vet will show you how to remove ticks quickly and safely, and offer a full range of veterinary diagnostic tests to determine whether or not your pet might have become infected with a tick-borne disease enabling potentially life-saving treatment to begin right away.

StatSpin OvaTube – Parasite Detection Test

Parasite eggs, in the faeces of companion animals, is the simplest tell-tale sign that your cat, dog or rescued hedgehog has a potentially weakening parasite infestation. Your veterinary laboratory can quickly find, identify and count parasite eggs and oocytes with the StatSpin OvaTube diagnostic kit.

Keeping companion animals free from intestinal parasites has always been acknowledged as fundamental to their health and well being. Wildlife rescue centres and animal sanctuaries too are increasingly aware of the need to test for gut parasites, medicate where necessary and monitor constantly.

Centrifugal Flotation Speeds Up The Separation 

Before the built-in convenience of the StatSpin OvaTube, finding any parasite eggs and getting them out of the animal’s faeces was a long and dirty job, not exactly popular with veterinary technicians and animal sanctuary workers. Gravity Flotation, where a sample of faeces is mixed with a solution midway in density between faeces and eggs took up a lot of laboratory time. Centrifugal Flotation speeded up the separation of the denser faeces from less dense eggs but demanded an expensive, specialised a centrifuge.

The StatSpin kit not only speeds up the flotation process, using only a standard veterinary centrifuge, it completely eliminates the need to handle the faeces at any time from taking the sample to reading the microscope slide. And, if you haven’t got a laboratory centrifuge, you can still recover the parasite eggs by Gravity Flotation by just standing the tubes for 15 minutes.

Just A Few Minutes In A Centrifuge

StatSpin oocyte recovery starts with a small plastic coring tool, which cuts a plug of material from the animal’s faeces. This is mashed with flotation fluid in the plastic separation tube. A few minutes in a centrifuge, or a while longer by gravity, sends the heavier faeces to the bottom while the lighter eggs float to the top. Brief contact between a microscope coverslip and the fluid at the top of the tube is enough to transfer the floating eggs for examination and counting under the microscope.

For animal sanctuaries, charities and rescue centres, tailor-made flotation solutions and microscope transfer slides complement the 10-test and economical 50-test kits and make for cost-effective assessment of an animal’s health before and after anti-parasite treatment. For the busy veterinary practice, the speed and convenience of the centrifuge mediated test means that a diagnosis can often be made and treatment prescribed while the patient is still at the practice.

Contact our expert team for further guidance. Also, take a look at our full range of diagnostic kits.

FASTest Giardia Strip

Because FASTest Giardia Strip needs no refrigeration and no veterinary laboratory facilities, you can test for Giardia duodenalis in dogs and cats quickly, reliably and anywhere your vet practice needs you to go.

Diarrhoea, loss of appetite and weakening growth are among the most common symptoms found in ailing dogs and cats. Faced with a distraught owner and their much-loved pet, as their trusted vet, you can find yourself under considerable pressure to come up with the correct diagnosis right away. Determining if the suffering animal has a relatively minor infection, or something more serious and contagious, can be of critical importance – especially when there might be health implications for the animal’s human owners and their families.

Contaminated food and water

One of the most common diseases with a high risk of infecting other animals and occasionally humans is the intestinal parasite Giardia duodenalis. Most common in pups and kittens between six and twelve weeks old, the microscopic parasite finds its way into new hosts through food and water contaminated by faeces from infected animals. As with most treatable animal diseases, prevention is better than cure. Pets kept in a clean, faeces free environment, and prevented from drinking muddy water that other animals have contaminated, are much less likely to suffer from symptoms of Giardiasis.

Confirmation of Giardiasis is sure and simple with Vetlab’s exclusive Megacor FASTest Giardia Strip. Because it’s entirely self-contained, needs no refrigeration, incubation or laboratory equipment, the test can be carried out at your practice or on your client’s premises. After adding a small sample of dog or cat faeces to the test reagent, a drop of the mixture is spotted onto the test strip. After just five minutes, an obvious blue line appears to prove the test is working properly. If a solid red line also appears, then the test is positive for the infective ‘oocysts’ (parasite eggs) that hatch out into the ‘trophozoites’ (feeding organisms) which will cause the symptoms of Giardia.

Giardia Strip – simple, clear and easy to use

The simplicity of the test, clarity of the positive result and the robustness of the kit itself makes the Giardia Strip one of the most popular and widely used of Vetlab’s exclusive Megacor Diagnostics range. Used extensively in both veterinary practices and commercial veterinary laboratories, the test finds its niche in facilities needing a quick, reliable and cost-effective test, and in which pet owners and practitioners can have complete confidence.

Zoonotic Potential is not a phrase you’d expect to use everyday – unless you’re a vet, but it’s one that’s set to have a greater impact on you, your health and your pet’s health, especially if you enjoy the company of your pet when you travel abroad.

Since July 2004 it’s been relatively easy to travel to and from the UK without leaving your pet at home or enduring the long separation of enforced quarantine. Now all you need is to have your pet microchipped, vaccinated against rabies, treated for tapeworm – if your pet’s a dog, and have all this recorded in your pet’s passport.

Thanks to advances in electronic and medical technology, it’s now simple and straightforward to safely take your pet with you on holidays and even business trips abroad. But it’s what your pet might bring back from its travels – and might, potentially pass on to you and your family, that’s starting to worry UK vets.

Pets and their owners travelling further afield

Zoonotic Potential is how your vet describes the chance that your pet might pick up a disease and then pass it on to you. Compared to many countries, the UK is exceptionally free from serious and life-threatening diseases of both humans and their pets. But as pets and their owners travel further afield, the chance of encountering and bringing home such a disease can only increase.

Of special concern to vets are so called ‘vector-borne’ diseases. These are parasites and infections transmitted between animals by intermediaries such as fleas, mites, ticks and biting insects. This means that even though you might think you’ve kept your pet away from other, possibly infected, animals and food, you can’t be sure your pet hasn’t picked up a disease-carrying vector.

Diagnostic Test Kits for Insect Borne Diseases

As usual, prevention is better than cure. Your vet can provide you with the best applications and treatments to stop nasty, disease infested, hitchhikers getting a free ride on your pet. Your vet will also advise you on the precautions you and your pet should take while you’re abroad.

But if, when you get home, your pet shows symptoms of being less than 100%, then visit your vet right away. Early testing of your pet with Vetlab Supplies Diagnostic Kits for insect borne diseases including Leishmaniasis and the tick borne Anaplasmosis will not only give a prompt diagnosis and the right treatment for your pet, it will also reduce any Zoonotic Potential risk to you and your family.

To find out more about our large range of veterinary diagnostic test kits visit our website: www.vetlabsupplies.co.uk or Telephone: 01798 874567