Heartworms in Humans – Can We Get That From Our Pets?

Your pet’s health is important, and so is yours. Heartworm disease belongs to one of the life-threatening diseases for pets that require immense care. There are many parasites that not only affect your pet but can also be detrimental to your health. So, it is imperative for pet parents to know if can humans get heartworms from dogs, and here’s all that you need to know about it.

Heartworms in Humans

What Are Heartworms?

Heartworms are commonly referred to as Dirofilaria immitis, which is a parasitic worm that spreads through the bite of a mosquito. The natural host for heartworms is dogs, but they can also be found in cats. Heartworm disease can lead to heart failure, severe lung disease, and other organ damage in animals suffering from heartworms. Heartworms live in the heart, lungs, and associated blood cells of their hosts. That’s why they are called parasitic worms.

What Causes Heartworms

Heartworm primarily affects a dog through a mosquito bite. However, it can also affect other animals including – wolves, foxes, raccoons, cats, and coyotes. The mosquito ingests the microfilaria during a blood meal, and mature worms produce those small worms. Microfilaria develops into larvae in the mosquito, and subsequent mosquito blood meals transmit the larvae.

It takes 6 months for microfilaria to develop into adult worms when ingested into a new host, which can, in turn, cause an infection that can result in blockage of major arteries or organ infections in animals. A heartworm larva never really matures in humans, and this causes pulmonary dirofilariasis. This is because your body reacts to its tissue with inflammation as it tries to destroy the heartworms.

Symptoms of Heartworms in Humans

Here are the symptoms of heartworm infections in humans. However, the symptoms can differ in humans and animals, the reason being the way they develop into the bloodstream.

  • Coughing
  • Weight loss
  • Fever
  • Fluid buildup around the lungs
  • Exercise Intolerance
  • Fainting
  • The round lesion that shows up on the chest X-ray

How Do You Diagnose Heartworms in Humans?

As the symptoms of heartworm disease are common, you may not realize that you have got a heartworm infection until your doctor diagnoses it. One gets to know about heartworms when the doctor sees a coin lesion on an X-ray. The lesion is granuloma, which results from the buildup of immune cells and inflammation known as histiocytes that fight the heartworm infection. The doctor takes a tissue sample from the lung to test the heartworm infection if they spot one of the lesions on an X-ray.

Ways to Treat Heartworms

Surgeons can remove lung granulomas and nodules under the skin to treat heartworms in humans. Moreover, the best way to prevent heartworms is to avoid mosquito bites in the area where Dirofilaria larvae infect mosquitoes.

The Final Takeaway

In a nutshell, we need to worry about getting heartworm infection from cats or dogs, or other pets as it is the mosquitoes that carry such infections. And heartworms aren’t a major issue until they cause discomfort, pain, or other symptoms.