Lifestyle

Beware! Your pet could give you a parasitic worm infection

Dogs and cats could be man’s best friends, but they could also transfer a dangerous parasitic worm into your body

If you are a pet lover, you need to be aware of this. For, healthy living always comes first in this era of pandemics and communicable diseases. Dogs and cats are man’s best friends, but they could prove to be dangerous too – of course not because of a fault of theirs.

Dogs and cats are prone to parasitic worms and these worms are capable of shifting themselves into human bodies at a faster rate. When compared to other worm species, those that infect the dogs and cats have the potential to leap into human body systems much easily.

That is what a new study has revealed. Researchers at the University of Georgia’s Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases have come up with revelations that could prompt caution while getting too close with the dogs and cats that live in your homes as pets.

Closeness with pets could give you parasitic worm infection

The study encountered three different species of worms that do not easily infect human bodies, but it has cautioned that these worms could attain a 70 percent possibility to switch over to humans in future.

The reason for this is being attributed to humans’ close relationships with cats and dogs they rear as pets. Spending time with pets, playing with them, feeding them and the like increase the chance of a switch over, a report that quoted the researchers at the University of Georgia’s Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases has said.

In the meantime, the World Health Organisation has also cautioned the global public about a chance of parasitic worms called helminths infecting 1.5 billion people. These parasites have been found as a cause for illnesses such as schistosomiasis, filariasis and more such.

Not just cats and dogs, fish could also be a risk

The study, which looked into the traits of as many as 737 parasitic worm species that predominantly infect mammals, zeroed in on 137 that are a potential risk as they have the ability to infect people.

Cats and dogs, which wander about, are vulnerable to such parasitic infections and they, as pets, could carry these worms home. Though we have discussed the case of dogs and cats, it has also been found that fish also can host parasitic worms.

This could mean that consuming raw or undercooked fish poses a potential risk. A roundworm variety that is responsible for the herring worm disease has been oft-detected in Japan and parts of Europe, as people in these regions eat raw fish or undercooked fish.

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Sanjeev Ramachandran

A journalist with 23 years of experience, Sanjeev has worked with reputed media houses such as Business Standard, The Ne More »
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