Parasitic Worm: Heterobilharzia Americana
Posted October 20, 2004

With all the recent wet weather conditions, especially in the South, dog owners should be aware of a nasty parasitic worm called Heterobilharzia Americana.

Learn more about this worm by clicking on the following links: http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/dxendopar/parasitepages/trematodes/h_americana.html and the American Association for Veterinary Parasitologists: http://www.aavp.org/

A recent dog list on the internet had a post from a dog breeder in Texas. The breeder was looking for some assurance and help, but also wanted to send out a warning to other dog owners. She explained that about six weeks ago one of her bitches stopped eating and rapidly started losing weight. Her dog would not eat. Then she developed messy stools. Trying everything under the sun to entice her dog to eat, the dog still refused food. After spending over two thousand dollars, the bitch continued to decline, going from 60-plus pounds to 34 pounds. This bitch had just turned 2 years old and fed a natural raw diet since birth.

A couple weeks later, when she was let out of her crate, she staggered. Checking her out, she seemed extremely dehydrated despite drinking and sub-q fluids, she was taken to the vet emergency clinic, where she continued to decline. By 2:00 a.m. she started seizuring and when the breeder went to pick her up at the emergency clinic in the morning, the dog slipped into a coma. She took the dog to her regular vet and the dog was put down. The pathology revealed a nasty parasitic worm called Heterobilharzia Americana.

The snail that can carry this worm apparently thrives in standing water. The breeder is now landscaping the yard to eliminate wet areas and are planning on spreading diatomaceous earth to get rid of the snail population.

http://www.rottweilerhealth.org/rott_healthissues.html#CURCUMIN

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http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/dxendopar/parasitepages/trematodes/h_americana.html

Hosts:

* Dogs, raccoons, bobcats, nutria, rabbit (definitive)
* Snails (intermediate).

Life Cycle:

The egg hatches in water and the miracidium finds and penetrates a snail. Sporocysts and then daughter sporocysts develop in the snail. Cercariae develop in the daughter sporocysts, and when mature emerge from the snail. The cercariae swim around until they find a definitive host, whose skin they will penetrate. They migrate to the liver where they mature and then make their way to the mesenteric veins where the male and female worms join together. The female spends the rest of her life in the gynecophoric groove of the male. Eggs are laid in the mesenteric vein and make their way through the intestinal wall into the lumen of the intestine. Eggs pass out in the feces.

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Amazing, all you need to do is deworm for 10 days. Have to keep that in mind if I ever see this.

$2,000 and they never dewormed? Is there something about this worm that makes it undetectable without a specific type of test?

Based off the symptoms that were described, a worm wouldn't have been my first thought though.

And I don't think at the time that this worm was even known about. Now it can be found by doing a fecal test, same as with most other internal parasites, but then I don't think they even knew to look for it.