This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Parasites in wildlife don't just pose a risk to their wild hosts—they can also spread to domestic animals and humans, making safe and reliable ways to screen for these pests critical to promoting better health for all. Justin Brown, associate teaching professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, said one such parasite is Echinococcus.
It is a type of tapeworm that often causes no clinical signs in wild and domestic dogs but can lead to severe effects in humans. Brown—along with a team including undergraduate students in the college and researchers from other institutions—performed a series of studies examining the prevalence of the tapeworm in wild canids such as coyotes and foxes, along with the best ways to detect it. They published their findings in the journal One Health.
"Echinococcus can pass from wild or pet dogs to humans, where it can cause infections, typically in the lungs or liver, that are complicated to diagnose or treat," Brown said. "Although the prevalence of infection in wild canids appears to be low in Pennsylvania, we think it is important that veterinarians, pet owners, hunters and trappers know that this parasite is present in the commonwealth." The researchers teamed up with Antech Diagnostics, a company specializing in diagnostic tools for animals. Antech had developed a test called the KeyScreen GI Parasite PCR, which tests for 20 important gastrointestinal parasites of dogs and cats, some of which are zoonotic—or transmissible to humans.
In domestic dogs and cats, the KeyScreen GI Parasite PCR has been shown to be more sensitive than traditional ways to test for gastrointestinal parasites in fecal samples. Consequently, Brown and his team were interested in using it to compare parasite data among wild canids, pet dogs and hunting dogs in Pennsylvania. They theorized that the results would include a spectrum of disease risk, with higher parasite levels in wildlife and lower levels in domestic dogs, and that they could then characterize the parasites in each of these categories of canids.
For the study, the researchers compared KeyScreen GI Parasite PCR data processed from samples they collected from 26,981 pet dogs, 59 hunting dogs and 262 wild canids from Pennsylvania to determine parasite diversity and prevalence. As they expected, the researchers found higher levels of multiple parasites in wild canids than in pet dogs, as well as higher levels of parasites such as hookworms and whipworms in hunting dogs compared with pet dogs. But in the wild canids, they also found evidence of Echinococcus, which was only recently identified in Pennsylvania.
"Diagnostically, Echinococcus is tricky, because traditional diagnostic approaches may not identify infections," Brown said. "Echinococcus eggs in feces look indistinguishable from other common tapeworms. In addition, Echinococcus is very small—2 to 7 millimeters (0.08 to 0.28 inches)—and easy to miss with the naked eye.
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