External parasites such as fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and mites cause serious illness in dogs and cats around the world, in addition to being an emerging public health concern for causing infectious diseases in humans.
To maintain the health of our pets, it is very important to implement or adopt what is commonly called a pest prevention program run with professional help if the situation is already very severe. Infestations of fleas, mites, and other insect pests should not be underestimated for any reason. They can cause much bigger problems than they seem.
External parasites cause serious problems, sometimes looking like dermatological problems, often causing itching, inflammation, and redness of the skin, but they also predispose to secondary infections with less obvious symptoms and can transmit serious infectious or systemic diseases.
Mites are skin-infecting arachnids that cause different types of mange affecting dogs, cats, and humans, especially in young or immunosuppressed individuals, and can manifest in different ways causing different types of changes such as alopecic lesions, intense itching or flaking of the skin. In addition, they cause symptoms of acute otitis externa, which we can detect by intense scratching, head tilting, excessive production of dark-colored earwax, and pain.
Lice are very common parasites worldwide, whose bites cause intense itching in patients, causing them to compulsively scratch or bite. This situation provokes secondary injuries due to self-trauma, in addition to the well-known and annoying allergic dermatitis. Fleas are parasites that transmit bacteria or other parasites, such as Bartonella, which causes “cat scratch disease” or Dipylidium, an intestinal worm that we can find in feces, similar to a grain of rice, and produces intense itching in the anus when expelled during bowel movements, causing the animal to drag its hindquarters on the ground.
Flea bites can cause infections of other microorganisms in dogs, cats, and humans that trigger serious diseases. These include Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Babesia, or Rickettsia which affect the blood and its components, causing apathy, anorexia accompanied by weight loss, fever, and anemia.
While mosquitoes and sandflies cause chronic diseases such as Leishmaniasis, which is present throughout the national territory, certain regions have a higher risk. It mainly affects dogs but can also occur in cats and humans. Dirofilariasis or “liver fluke disease” is a very common infectious pathology on the Mediterranean coast and certain areas in the interior of the peninsula. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a type of mosquito that commonly lives in coastal areas causing weight loss and apathy, respiratory problems, cardiovascular disorders, and anemia.
For all of the above, the best way to protect our pets is through prevention, preventing the parasite from coming into contact with them. For this purpose, it is important to use external antiparasitics, insecticides, and mosquito repellents, at any time of the year. We must also pay attention to the treatment of the environment and the environment as part of the overall control, as well as taking precautions in our walking habits, avoiding the areas and hours of greatest parasite activity.
