Horse Roundworm – Infection, Transmission & Diseases
Horse roundworm
The name of the horse roundworm stands for a roundworm that has infested the organism of a horse. Any horse pasture is considered infested because the eggs of a horse roundworm remain viable for up to 10 years, which allows them to spread to other horses and humans for a long time.
What is horse roundworm?
The horse roundworm is not a separate species, but the common roundworm. These parasites usually infest humans, monkeys, but also bears. The roundworm manages without an intermediate host like a horse, but it can be transmitted directly from there to humans.
The horse roundworm is considered to be particularly prolific and vicious, as the females can lay up to 200,000 eggs at a time, which remain viable for 10 years. In the egg of a horse roundworm there is a larva that hatches under favorable conditions. For this reason, every horse pasture is generally considered to be infested, but infections only break out under poor hygienic conditionshorse stableout.
Horse roundworm can severely damage the horse’s intestines , liver and lungs and lead to the death of the animal, especially if the affected horse was not healthy before.
Roundworms and thus also the horse roundworm belong to the roundworms that mainly reside in the intestines of their host and from there spread to the whole body.
Occurrence, Distribution & Properties
The roundworm itself occurs worldwide. The horse roundworm, on the other hand, is mainly found on horse pastures, in horse stables and where horses apple apples. This form of roundworm mainly spreads to people who work with horses or spend their free time intensively with the animals and also clean stables or pastures.
A foal initially has no contact with the horse roundworm until it comes to a pasture for the first time. Because from then on, the horse roundworms are transmitted from the older animals that graze there to the foal – but it does not necessarily have to be infected if the immune system is healthy. Since foals generally come into contact with the horse roundworm, individual worms quite often penetrate the organism and migrate through it. As a result, healthy horses develop reliable resistance to horse roundworm by around the age of two, which is why genuine infections become increasingly rare from this age onwards.
Deworming provides the final protection against this. However, care should be taken with foals and yearlings. On average it can be assumed that the many eggs of a roundworm remain infectious for up to 4 years. This means that the larvae in the egg could hatch at any time and reproduce themselves in the host. With horse roundworm it is even a maximum of 10 years.
The horse roundworm egg has this resistance because it has three shells. It is therefore optimally protected against extreme dryness, chemical substances and high temperatures.
It is estimated that around 22% of the world’s human population is infected with roundworms, coming not only from a horse but also from other hosts. Around 1% succumb to the worm infection. The female horse roundworm can grow up to 40 cm long and 5 mm wide, a male worm up to 25 cm long and 3 mm wide. Optically, horse roundworms are reminiscent of an earthworm.
The parasites have a life expectancy of about 1 1/2 years per individual. They can move independently and are able to penetrate the walls of internal organs such as the small intestine or liver without causing life-threatening or even serious internal injury to the host.
Diseases & Ailments
Infection with horse roundworm manifests itself relatively similarly in horses and humans. The larvae are ingested first; in the horse, this occurs by grazing on a spot where an infected animal has appled. The larva enters the small intestine, hatches and perforates the intestinal wall. It then gets into the liver and finally into the lungs, where it can trigger a cough and, in the worst case, pneumonia . Both horses and humans cough from this and either get rid of the larvae or swallow them. As a result, it gets back into the small intestine, where it now develops into a full-grown horse roundworm.
Only two months after entry of a not yet hatched larvae of the horse roundworm can it be detected in the faeces. This means that the cause of the cough in horses and humans is not yet detectable in the faeces when the cough first appears.
Another risk, besides severe pneumonia, is blockage in the small intestine if too many horse roundworms are there. Life-threatening intestinal entanglements and blockages can occur, especially in horses, but also in humans.
Adult horse roundworms can continue to block the pancreatic ducts and cause colic , result in malnutrition , or through biochemical processes and changes in their host’s body attempt to exit through body openings such as the mouth or nose . An example of this is anesthesia .
Violent allergic reactions are possible to the larvae and adult stages of horse roundworm , which in turn lead to the death of the host. Other complications can result from inflammation of an infected host’s lungs, such as high fever or asthmatic coughing fits.
Hello! I am Lisa Newlon, and I am a medical writer and researcher with over 10 years of experience in the healthcare industry. I have a Master’s degree in Medicine, and my deep understanding of medical terminology, practices, and procedures has made me a trusted source of information in the medical world.