Chinchillas and heartworm

Dust Fly · May 31, 2009

This might be an awkward question but I keep seeing that commercial for heartworm prevention for dogs. It always makes me wonder if a chinchilla can get heartworm. I tried looking online and really didn't find an answer.

AZChins · May 31, 2009

I've never heard of such a thing. I don't think you'd have to worry unless the chinchilla was around a bunch of mosquitoes. If you have mosquitoes in your house that bad, you probably have other things to worry about rather than heartworm! (That would mean you have standing water somewhere in your house or that there is a problem with the a/c or evap cooling.

Chin_Pig · May 31, 2009

we can get heart worms but its not common they usually turn in to cysts and hang out in the lungs or eyes

http://www.heartwormsociety.org/article_58.html
they say: Heartworm disease is a serious and potentially fatal condition caused by parasitic worms living in the arteries of the lungs and occasionally in the right side of the heart of dogs, cats and other species of mammals, including wolves, foxes, ferrets, sea lions and (in rare instances) humans.

SunshineChins · May 31, 2009

Chin_Pig said:
we can get heart worms but its not common they usually turn in to cysts and hang out in the lungs or eyes

:shocked:
ehhhhh... yucky just thinking about it...

3CsMommy · May 31, 2009

Cleo's vet has a preserved heart removed from a dog that died of heartworm some years ago in a jar in one of his exam rooms. It's creepy and disgusting and thank goodness he kept it b/c he's probably saved hundreds of dogs and cats from that particular infestation.

Dust Fly · Jun 2, 2009

Yeah, heartworms are not a very fun topic. From Chin_pigs response it sounds like it could be theoretically possible but not very likely.

razberry224 · Jun 29, 2009

I would not think they have made up a medicine for chins for heartworm preventive.
Being that it is transmited by mosquitoes, And if your chins are keep in the house they should be safe.

Great question though I just had to read this Thread when I saw it.

Chinniechantel · Jun 29, 2009

Gosh, I can't remember who told me this, but they said it is possible but not likely. I thought it was Metronidizole they tried when they had one...but I am not 100% sure.

equus_peduus · Jun 29, 2009

Chin_Pig said:
we can get heart worms but its not common they usually turn in to cysts and hang out in the lungs or eyes

Where did you find this? Heartworms do not encyst, and they do not go to the eyes. Roundworms (intestinal parasites) can.

Cats are at risk of heartworms. In some studies of cats with heartworm associated disease, almost half the cats were indoor-only. Mosquitoes can come indoors, year-round.

Heartworms are treated differently for different species (because it causes different types of disease), but in no species is metronidazole the treatment of choice.

Heartworms are worms in the bloodstream. In cats, they die in the lungs and cause inflammatory disease, leading to respiratory problems. In dogs, they cause masses of worms in the large vessels of the heart and lungs, causing heart and respiratory disease. Most of the non-host species (e.g., humans and presumably chinchillas), the larvae die before they cause a problem, but can rarely develop to the point of causing problems.

Personally, I don't worry about heartworms in my chins, but I do in my cats. Ferrets can also get heartworms. Not sure about rabbits and the like.

Chin_Pig · Jun 30, 2009

Heartworms are classified as nematodes (roundworms) and are filarids, one of many species of roundworms. Dogs and cats of any age or breed are susceptible to infection

--from this site heartwormsociety and as you know roundworms cause cysts, im not sure exactly where i read that heart worms specifically can cause cysts but its not really common for us to get them anyway.

equus_peduus · Jun 30, 2009

okay, yeah. Technically heartworms are a type of roundworm. However, intestinal parasite roundworms do slightly different things than heartworms do. Gah. terminology gets confusing if you're trying to avoid scientific names and specifics. lol.

Chinniechantel · Jun 30, 2009

We had breeder friend get a bad bag of Mazuri and found worms or eggs in a bag and had a dead chin the next day or so. Her vet said it was roundworm and I thought prescribed metronidizole or maybe panacur. That is what I got that from. I believe it ended up fine and without any for sure answers, and she treated all her chins with metronidizole or panacur, but it was scary since it was most likely due to poor storage and a lot of feed stores here are terrible. Anyway a little off topic, but I thought it worth mentioning.

equus_peduus · Jun 30, 2009

Metronidazole is not a treatment for roundworm. Panacur is a treatment for intestinal roundworms. Neither is a treatment for heartworms.

Intestinal parasites are typically transmitted via a fecal-oral route. Other pests can infest bags of feed, but offhand, I wouldn't expect intestinal parasites to do it without fecal contamination - and the eggs are microscopic (the worms aren't, but you don't get free-living adult worms, since those need to be in the gut to develop).

Chin_Pig · Jun 30, 2009

so i searched again today and this is where i found about them turning in to cysts in the lungs or hanging out in the eyes. vetinfo

Humans are an aberrant host for heartworms. Basically, what this means
is that the microfilaria (baby heartworms) are transferred to humans and
they try to follow their normal lifecycle but can't, because they are in the
wrong host. This does not prevent them from succeeding in making it
partway through their lifecycle, though. So instead of winding up in the heart
and pulmonary arteries and living several years, as occurs in dogs, the
heartworms usually end up as cysts in the lungs. These cysts look
pretty much like lung cancer on an X-ray and a number of humans have had
surgery to remove the cyst and/or lung lobes as the result of the resemblance.
In addition, on rare occasions, heartworms find another spot in the body
with oxygen levels and conditions that support their development and live
there for some time. In humans, a spot that has these conditions is the
interior of the eye. So heartworms are occasionally found inside the eye in
humans.

equus_peduus · Jul 2, 2009

If I recall, it's less that the worm encysts so much as the worm causes inflammation and the body walls it off. I have never heard of heartworms in the eyes though I suppose it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Any road, I'm not super worried about heartworm for myself either. Though it can cause problems. I wonder if the surgery to get the heartworm out causes more damage than the heartworm just hanging out does. Though if you see something like that on chest x-rays, they'd want to take it out. And the question arises as to why they need to do the x-rays in teh first place... hmmmm

If it were that big of a problem for humans, then we'd be seeing a lot of it. My understanding is that in some areas (e.g., along the gulf of mexico), any dog that's not on preventative will be infected in its lifetime (and my impression is that it's usually within a year or two). This says to me that lots of mosquitos are carrying it, and presumably those mosquitoes are biting humans, and if there isn't a super high incidence in gulf coast humans, then I probably don't have to worry much in the much less high incidence area I'm in.

Chinchillas and heartworm

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