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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Prevalence of toxocara infection in domestic dogs and cats in urban environment
1 Skryabin All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Fundamental and Applied Parasitology of Animals and Plants, Moscow
2 Department of Experimental Parasitology, Institute of experimental morphology, pathology and anthropology with museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia
Correspondence should be addressed: Irina M. Odoevskaya
Bolshaya Cheremushkinskaya 28, Moscow, 117218; ur.relbmar@miayaksveodo
Funding: this work was supported by the Russian Science Fund, Project #14-1600026.
Toxocariasis is the type of helminthic infection found in dogs and cats most often. It is a zoonotic disease that presents a serious threat to the national public health. Urban environment favors transmission of toxocara from animals to people; soil is the key element of such transmission. To learn the degree of toxocara invasion in domestic cats and dogs living in Moscow, we studied their feces for 7 years applying the flotation method. We found that in domestic dogs the intensity of toxocara invasion was 2.43%, but there is a big difference between puppies and adult animals: 5.53% of the former, twice as much as the latter, suffered from the invasion. The intensity of infection in adult cats was 3.97%; kittens, same as puppies, were more prone to host toxocara: 10.44% of those examined did. In general, 5.75% of cats had toxacara, which is twice as much compared to dogs; the figure applies to all ages. Stable infestation of domestic animals with this species of helminths makes them a constant source of toxocara eggs contamination in urban environments, which ups the risk of larvae toxocariasis for people.
Keywords: prevalence of toxocariasis, toxocara, domestic dogs, domestic cats