If your dog picks up these resistant hookworms, it’s not as easy as just treating them with medication anymore.” “Personally, I would not take my dog to a dog park. With repeated treatments over time, most of the drug-susceptible worms at the farm or kennel will be killed, and the resistant worms will then predominate.Ĭompounding the problem, veterinarians don’t typically test animals after treatment to ensure the worms are gone, so the drug-resistant worms go unnoticed until the dog has a heavy infection and starts showing signs of hookworm disease. If dewormers are applied frequently, the newly emerging resistant worms will survive and pass on the mutation that helped them sneak past the drug to their offspring.
In situations where there are a lot of dogs infected with a lot of parasites, such as on racing dog breeding farms and kennels, there are many more opportunities for parasites to develop rare mutations allowing them to survive the dewormer treatments. The study marks the first demonstration of widespread multiple-drug resistance in a dog parasite reported in the world. Hookworms can sometimes “hide” in tissues, where they won’t reproduce and shed eggs until the infection worsens and leaks into the dog’s intestines.īut perhaps more alarming, the team saw that the dogs still had high levels of infection with hookworms even after they were treated for them. Hookworms are visible within the intestine of a deceased puppy.
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