Every dog owner has tried it.. Your dog poops while you are walking in the park, you look around to see if anyone noticed. You don't pick up the poop and quickly moves on. I'll tell you the reason why that is a very bad idea!
There are more than just aesthetic reasons why it is important to pick up dogpoop. This is Toxocara canis, a worldwide-distributed helminth parasite of dogs and other canids. The roundworm is present in dog populations all over the world, several studies showed a T.canis prevalence in dogs varying from 2,2 %-51,4 %, but the parasite is undeniably present worldwide.
Why is T.canis important?
The adult worm is located in the gastrointestinal tracts of infected dogs and create eggs which is shed with the faeces (200.000 eggs per day). These eggs can remain in the enviroment for years and become a potentiel source of new infections in dogs, other canids but also humans. After ingestion of these eggs, the egg hatch in the intestine and develop into a new eggshedding adult worm after some weeks (in the dog!). The tricky part is that dogs do not show any signs of being infected. If a human ingest T. canis eggs, the phenomenon called "Visceral Larval Migrans" (VLM) or "Ocular Larval Migrans" (OLM) often appear. What is that?
Visceral Larval Migrans and Ocular Larval Migrans
You can say that the parasite enter "the wrong host" and gets confused about that! The worm starts to migrate in the human body and cause damage. By some reason, the roundworm relatively often end up in the eye and cause blindness (OLM). Global seroprevalences (antibodies against T.canis in the blood) in humans are reported from a variety of countries (I know some of the studies are quite old, but the seroprevalences are still that high today). Environmental contamination with Toxocara eggs is considered the main source of human illness due to Toxocara canis.
Eggs attach in dog fur
Nonetheless, not only do excreted eggs in dog faeces and contaminating soil provide a human infection risk, but also do eggs attached to dog hair. The actual impact of T. canis eggs within dogs fur on human health remains to be determined, but as pets literally share house and bed with their owners, this source of infection might be underestimated. There are many more aspects about T. canis I haven't told you guys, a book has been written about Toxocara canis called "The Enigmatic Parasite".
My bachelorproject was about T.canis, so therefore I have a speciel interest in this topic (yay, dogshit!)
Our influence by picking up poop
A study estimated the contribution of dogs to the environmental Toxocara egg contamination (there are also a contribution from cats and foxes). If the owner follows the deworming advices from the vet, dog's contribution would drop from 39 to 28 %. Alternatively, when 50 % of owners would always remove their dogs’ faeces, dogs’ contribution would drop to 20 % (A reduction of nearly 50 %). You can actually detect a significantly higher seroprevalence in kids, and that's properly due to many children play in parks and playgrounds, where people are walking dogs.
My message: pick up your dogs poop, there are no reasons not to! ;-)
Thanks for sharing this important information with us. Helps to create awareness about zoonotic diseases.
Thank you for the informative post - hopefully that will have an impact on dog walkers that don't clean up after themselves.
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STOPvery usefull post congatulations! you will be a great vet! keep it up! I´follow you