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  • 2019-03-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Child Die from Heartworm Contracted from a Dog? (en)
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  • A Facebook post circulated in March 2019 that purported to offer a photograph of the heart of a child who died after contracting parasites from sleeping with and kissing a domesticated dog. A bad practice is to humanize pets. I’m sending you a kid’s heart that, due to sleeping and kissing his dog, it transmitted its parasites, the post warned. Those parasites blocked his heart and he died here at the Children’s Hospital. Please forward this to family and friends: In fact, this photograph was taken from a 2012 paper published in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews, where it was captioned as picturing Male and female adult worms of D. immitis in the heart of a dog, not in the heart of a human child. D. immitis (or Dirofilaria immitis), commonly known as heartworm or dog heartworm, is a parasitic, thread-like roundworm that is spread via mosquito bites. D. immitis infections cause dirofilariasis (also known as heartworm disease), which can be fatal to dogs if left untreated: D. immitis adult worms can cause pulmonary artery blockage in dogs, leading to an illness that can include cough, exhaustion upon exercise, fainting, coughing up blood, and severe weight loss. However, as the Clinical Microbiology Reviews paper noted, humans are not suitable hosts for Dirofilaria species, and one of that paper's illustrations shows that Dirofilaria infections in humans do not spread to the heart: As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in an article about dirofilariasis, humans become infected with Dirofilaria through mosquito bites (not from physical contact with infected canines); reported cases of infections in humans are quite uncommon; and D. immitis worms are rarely found outside the lungs in humans: A Healthline article that specifically addresses the issue of Can Humans Get Heartworms from Dogs? reiterates these same points — heartworm infections in humans are rare, aren't transmitted by contact with dogs, don't occur in the heart, and aren't fatal: In short, you can feel secure that your children's cuddling the family dog will not result in any of them contracting a fatal case of heartworm. (en)
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