The trials of the jungle are ever-changing. We had started vaccinating the horses one evening when suddenly the sky opened and a downpour came. We returned the vaccines to the refrigerator and ran for shelter. In the evenings, I always read my book, “Where There Is No Animal Doctor,” to look for answers from my cases that day. I used my headlamp to read, but that night the rain brought swarms of small moths which were attracted to the light. I tried to wrap myself in a tarp so they could not fly in my face, but they managed to find an opening and fly right into my eye. I finally gave up and went to sleep early. The villagers said those moths come out during storms, and the next morning everything was covered in dead moths. Usually the bugs are not that bad this time of year with it being the dry season. Next trip, I am bringing a mosquito net! Bathing in a cold river used to be tough for me, but between the humidity, long hikes with the herd, and looking at parasites, I was always grateful to jump in that river at the end of the day. Lacking the vet supplies I need happen on a case-by-case basis, and I will never be able to pack enough to cover all my bases. It makes me appreciate the convenience of working in a fully-equipped hospital and having pharmacies readily available.

The vaccines stayed properly temperature-regulated this time. Other than the rain storm delaying our vaccine clinic and working with half-feral mules and ponies, the mule men successfully vaccinated the entire herd. I told the men the amount of vaccine to draw up according the animal's size and the area on the neck to administer the vaccine, but I left the hands-on work up to them. One of the men was missing most of his fingers; but despite his birth defect, he was able to figure out how to connect a syringe and needle, which requires a fair amount of dexterity.

I conducted a fecal test to get an idea of the types of parasites infecting the herd. I went to the human medical clinic to use their microscope and met some of the medics and students working there. They were very interested in what I was doing with horse stool, so it was easy to strike up a conversation in broken English. I learned one of the medics, named Naytaw, had recently graduated with a Masters in Public Health. He spoke English well, and he told me there are university programs for refugees, and that he had interacted with Harvard Medical School through the program. After graduating, he chose to return to his village to help his own people.

After finishing my parasitology observation at the clinic, I headed back to meet with the mule handlers. The tubes of horse dewormer had taken up a lot of space in my pack, but it was a high priority, especially in a tropical environment. The ponies and mules demonstrated again that they are only half broke, but the men did a great job of working together. It was humorous to see such a small pony take advantage of four of us trying to hold them down, but we did succeed in the end.

I had a friend donate dog and cat dewormer for my trip, which had not been on my radar until she reached out about the idea. There had only been one dog in that village the last time I visited. His name was Freddy, and Freddy has since passed but left behind a bunch of Freddy juniors. I watched the village kids running around carrying puppies, and I envisioned the canine parasites that can be passed to humans. I observed the dogs scratching often, and I wondered which external parasites they could be passing on, too.

Deworming the dogs one time would not make much of an impact, so I packed in a surplus of dewormers but needed to find someone who would maintain a regular deworming schedule. I remembered Naytaw with his MPH, which focuses on the interaction of animals and humans. I hoped he might see the importance in what I wanted to implement.

I found Naytaw at his house, and he happily accepted the assignment. He went into his house and grabbed a list of the homes in the village that had dogs or cats and how many. I was surprised and asked him why he had this list. He said they had told him a veterinarian was coming to visit, and he hoped he might be able to work with her. He had been too reserved to ask to me when we had met before. That was an encouraging coincidence. Naytaw's list guided our house visits, and he dewormed all the pets in his village. I wrote out instructions so he could remember the dosages, and he thanked me for teaching him a new skill.

The following day, I hiked with a few of the mule men, Poh, and a mule to a village who had questions regarding their water buffalo. I brought along a tube to teach them how to relieve bloat and a wound insecticide to prevent screw worms. When we arrived at the village after our long hike, I did not see any water buffalo. Apparently the message had not been relayed that a water buffalo needed to be present for the clinic. It was another good reminder of patience and flexibility when working in a foreign culture. We waited over an hour in a bamboo hut while they said they had someone trying to find a buffalo. A sack of rice on a bamboo floor was comfortable enough, and I took a nap while I waited for the buffalo round-up.

Poh woke me up, telling me there were two very sick teenage boys that would be passing by from another village who were trying to reach the medical clinic. I offered them the mule we had brought in with us and wondered if he was broke to ride. They nearly took me up on the offer, but instead the people from the village appeared with a hammock strung on bamboo and carried the boys themselves through the mountainous terrain to the clinic. I watched them head out–working together to carry the boys and was once again blown away by the way they care for each other.
After they left with the boys, we returned our focus to the water buffalo clinic. It was another reminder to me of the importance of being patient and flexible with my planning. If we had not had to wait so long, I would have missed out on an amazing demonstration of selflessness.

The villagers were unable to find where the buffalo had gone, so I decided we could just have a sit-down meeting where I would do my best to answer their questions. Sitting on a hard bamboo floor for hours is another jungle challenge I am learning to appreciate.

I had been refreshing my knowledge of common cattle pathologies in preparation for the trip, and I was able to answer more questions than I expected. The most peculiar question was that some buffalo had eaten their clothes which were hanging to dry, and the clothes became trapped in their stomach. Even Poh laughed while translating that one. They wanted to know if there was something they could give to break down the fabric. When I worked as a small animal vet, I was shocked by the items we scoped out of dogs' stomachs; things which they had spontaneously decided looked appetizing. I never knew water buffalo had some much in common with golden retrievers.

My time in the jungle ran out, but I believe that important nutritional changes had been made which, in time, would do a lot to improve the herd's overall health. Several days after my departure, one of the volunteers still at the village reached out to assure me that the mule handlers were still turning the herd out to pasture and still cutting down banana leaves for them to eat with their increased portion of grain.

When I made it back into town, I returned to the vet shop with a translator to find medications that I had promised to send back to the village for their water buffalo. One of those items was dewormer. After witnessing how little the buffalo from that village are handled, I realized it was important to find a topical solution rather than an injection, as it is far easier to pour liquid on their back than inject them with a needle. It took a lot of translating and charades to identify what I was looking for, but we found the medications and the buffalo will be receiving their first dewormer treatment any day now.

My last stop in town was to visit ECHO, a nonprofit farm that carried a copy of the book, “Where There Is No Animal Doctor.” I wanted another copy to send back to the mule handlers in a second language (theirs is in English). Most of the mule handlers are illiterate, but they told me if they have the book in two languages they can show it to other villagers who can read it to them. Thankfully there are illustrations on every page, too.

When I went to ECHO and told the staff that I was a veterinarian, they asked me to come look at three of their sick calves. I assessed the young calves and gave their intern, Christina, a basic treatment plan. Christina and I discovered we were from the same hometown, Sacramento, CA, and now here we were both using our unique interests to serve on the other side of the globe. It really is a small world.

Christina gave me a tour of the rest of the farm, which had livestock that they were using for nutritional assessment. She taught me which plants are hardy and easy to propagate in the jungle and which ones have higher protein content. I took a special interest in that, as I want to continue building the herd's nutritional plan even as I return to the U.S.

That concludes this journey. It was a special time to foster new and old relationships, teach and learn from the local villagers, and do my part to make a small difference in the lives of animals and the people connected to them.

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Dr. Thomas Geruden, with Zoetis in Belgium, said these results are not surprising as the worm population is continuously pressured for selection of survivable genes in the calendar-based deworming routine.

Geurden and other researchers in Belgium, along with scientists at the Gluck Equine Research Center in Lexington, Ky., studied two farms that utilized the standard deworming protocol on their Belgian draft horses.

The deworming schedule should have corresponded with the timeline of worm egg development, but drug resistance has caused the worm eggs to appear twice as fast as expected.

Fecal egg counts on every horse on the farm were performed every two weeks from April to September for three years. Horses that had more than 250 eggs per gram of manure were given pyrantel embonate, an alternative dewormer. All other horses were treated with standard anthelmintics in the spring and fall, reducing their deworming by half or two-thirds.

The researchers used the fecal egg counts, both before and after treatment, to create a model of worm life cycles that could predict drug resistance over the next 40 years. The team found that the alternative dewormer maintained low egg counts in all horses and slowed drug resistance in worms by 200 to 300 percent.

The scientists also found that the horses considered “high shedders” of worms were almost always under 5 years old. This knowledge might allow horse owners and caretakers to target which horses may need fecal egg counts run more often – and which may need more-frequent treatments.

The data suggests that fecal samples should be gathered for egg counts between 42 and 56 days after the spring moxidectin/ivermectin treatment, with a second sample taken between days 98 and 112. These numbers will help determine future egg counts and reduce deworming frequency.

The ability to model the rate of anthelmintic resistance using different deworming protocols has been helpful when discussing deworming with both horse owners and vets, the researchers found. A deworming plan specifically tailored to a farm may be more expensive initially, but the less-frequent, targeted deworming will pay off financially in the long run as dewormer resistance slows.

Read more at The Horse.

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Many stores that sell dewormer have added verbiage to the products that indicate that they are not safe for human consumption and are an unproven cure for COVID-19; other stores have removed ivermectin products from their shelves completely.

Ivermectin first came on the radar as a possible “cure” for COVID in 2020, when Monash University researchers reported that the drug could kill coronavirus in 48 hours in a lab setting. Though researchers at the Australian institution stressed that further testing was needed to establish the effectiveness and dosage of the drug, the public began seeking out ivermectin.

To date, completed studies on the efficacy of ivermectin are small and not considered of sufficient quality by researchers, though there are several studies currently underway. Reliable evidence doesn't support ivermectin use as a treatment or prophylactically for COVID-19.

Human-grade ivermectin is approved by the FDA for treatment of some parasitic worms and of some external parasites. Animal-grade ivermectin is not approved or dosed for humans and should never be ingested by humans. Side effects of taking livestock-grade ivermectin include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, skin rash, facial or limb swelling, decreased blood pressure, liver problems and neurologic issues like dizziness and seizures.

Read more at Slate.com.

Read the full study here.

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Current European Union regulations require dewormers to be available only by prescription.

The Irish Department of Agriculture and the Health Products Regulatory Authority identified conclusive evidence of widespread resistance to wormers: benzimidazole, levamisole, ivermectin and moxidectin are becoming increasingly ineffective at treating worms.

The new Irish regulatory measure is an attempt to slow drug resistance in the country by ensuring the dewormers are only being used when necessary.

There is concern among horse and farm owners that veterinarians will try to capitalize on the tightening of dewormer access as there are no mechanisms in place to remove or limit the economic incentive from medical sales. Smuggling dewormers into the country is also a concern.

Read more at AgriDirect and Westgate Labs.

The post Dewormers Will Require A Prescription In 2022; Irish Horse Owners Unhappy appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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A Polish study added pure flaxseed oil to the diet of 15 Thoroughbred and 12 Arabian horses that were fed oats, muesli, and hay three times a day. The horses were separated into four groups fed soybean oil, flaxseed oil, flaxseed oil and vitamin E, and one group with no added oil that served as a control. Lead researcher Dr. Wanda Górniak had the horses dewormed with ivermectin and praziquantel in February 2020.

In June 2020, researchers performed fecal egg counts on samples from the horses. The researchers found that 25 of the 27 horses had worms, with strongyles the most prevalent; one-third of the horses also had threadworms. The horses that had been fed flaxseed oil have the lowest prevalence of strongyles (71 percent compared to 100 percent in other groups).

The scientists concluded that the adding flaxseed oil to a horse's diet significantly reduces its strongyle worm load.

Read the study here.

Read more at HorseTalk.

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A preliminary study from England suggests that an enzyme found in fruits like papaya, pineapple and figs can prevent parasite eggs from hatching in a laboratory setting. A previous study found that cysteine proteinases can kill adult worms so Dr. Laura Peachey and her team tested the theory that these enzymes may also inhibit parasite eggs from hatching. 

Peachey's results confirmed these enzymes could inhibit hatching and also found that the enzymes inhibited the movement of small red worms in their infective stage. The researchers are unsure if the limited mobility is related to the cysteine proteinases or another compound in the extract. More research is needed to see how the enzymes do their work.

Read more at EQUUS.

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Members of the British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA) anthelmintic working group wrote to the Veterinary Record to express their concern over the findings of a small-scale study. Dr. David Rendle and his colleagues state that a “anthelmintic resistance disaster” is looming unless horse owners change horse-keeping ways.  

The study found that although there has been an uptick in the number of fecal worm egg counts (FWECs) performed, there has not been a corresponding downward trend in dewormer sales. The BEVA working group gathered information on the number of fecal worm egg counts completed and the sale of dewormers in the U.K. from 2015 to 2018. 

Though FWECs increased by 29 percent, the doses of dewormer sold only fell by 2.9 percent over the same period. The sale of these drugs dropped 8 percent between 2015 and 2016, and then rose every year after that.

If the deworming guidelines were being followed correctly, and dewormers would only be given when a FWEC deemed them necessary. There should be at least twice as many FWECs completed as doses of dewormer sold. However, the data shows that there was only one FWEC completed for every 11 doses of dewormer sold.  

The authors also point out that moxidectin sales remained high throughout the study period though experts have noted that it should not be used as a routine dewormer in horses. 

Read more here.  

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He spoke about current data showing resistance among cyathostomins (small strongyles) to the three main groups of anthelmintic (anti-parasitic) drugs.

“The small strongyle parasite, which is the type of parasite that all horses get, is the primary parasite category, the one that we are always deworming for,” Nielsen said.

The first class of anthelmintic drugs introduced and administered to combat small strongyles was the benzimidazoles in the 1960s. Because this class of drugs has been in use the longest, there is  wide-spread resistanceto these drugs.

“It is very rare to find these products still working,” Nielsen said.

Pyrantel salts began experiencing resistance in 1996 and Nielsen said it is also likely to find small strongyles resistant to Pyrantel dewormers today.

Macrocyclic lactones (ivermectin and moxidectin) are our “last resort,” with good efficacy, but there have been some questionable early signs of emerging resistance reported, according to Nielsen. In 2020, routine data collected from a farm in Central Kentucky confirmed resistance to macrocyclic lactones among small strongyles.

Nielsen shared data showing that macrocyclic lactones were 100 percent effective against small strongyles in a group of U.S.-bred yearlings, but the same dewormers administered to a group of imported, Irish-bred yearlings failed to remove small strongyle parasites.

“There's no doubt, looking across this data, that we have clear-cut, proven resistance to ivermectin in these imported parasites,” Nielsen said. “The problem is, if we have resistance to everything, what can we deworm with?” he said.

He described that the efficacy of moxidectin was also evaluated against the resistant parasites. Despite this drug being potentially more potent than ivermectin, it did not overcome the resistance and did not provide better efficacy.

Nielsen closed with a final note that ivermectin and moxidectin resistance is occurring in small strongyles. This case was only discovered due to the meticulous testing procedures in place on this particular farm. Without regular testing of deworming efficacy, drug resistant parasites will go undetected and farms will be left without opportunities to intervene before it is too late. Good parasite control starts and ends with testing the dewormers being used and this must be done every year.

Read more here.

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Adding to the issue is that even when the eggs are released, the packets aren't evenly distributed through the manure, meaning they could easily be missed under a microscope. However, there are other methods for detecting the presence of tapeworms in horses, including using manure, saliva or serum.

Drs.  Laura Jürgenschellert, Jürgen Krücken, Corrine Austin, Kirsty Lightbody, Eric Bousquet and Georg von Samson-Himmelstjerna used 48 horse farms in Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany, to test different tapeworm analysis methods. They took fecal samples from 484 horses, serum samples from 481 horses and saliva samples from 365 horses. The saliva and serum samples were tested to determine the antibody levels against tapeworms.

The fecal egg count tests detected tapeworm eggs in 0.6 percent of the samples (6.3 percent of the farm). However, antibodies against tapeworms were present in 16.2 percent of serum samples (52.1 percent of farms) and in 29.5 percent of the saliva samples (75.7 percent of farms).

The research team also sent out a questionnaire to horse owners and they determined that pasture access and pasture changes, as well as high strongyle egg counts, were risk factors for positive serum responses to tapeworms.

The scientists determined that treatment with a dewormer targeted to tapeworms is protective. The presence of foals and a large number of horses on the farm also seem to offer protective benefits. Interestingly, daily removal of manure didn't make a difference on whether a horse had tapeworms.

The research team concluded that conventional fecal tests for tapeworms are not accurate; for a true indication of the prevalence of tapeworms, horse owners should consider using antibody detection methods like the saliva test used in the study.

Read the full study here.

Read more at HorseTalk.

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Veterinarians originally recommended that horses be dewormed every two months, as that was when parasitologists began seeing worm eggs returning. Now, strategic deworming and an integrated approach to parasite management is preferred. This includes only deworming the horses that need it and not blanket deworming all horses on the farm.

Other ways to prevent worm burdens include:

• Quarantining new horses—this includes not turning them out on fields other horses will eventually use. The point is to keep the horse and the worms it os carrying separate long enough for the eggs to pass through his system.
• Feeding off the ground to prevent ingestion of larvae
• Ensuring feed and water sources are not contaminated with manure
• Removing manure piles before eggs hatch
• Composting manure at temperatures above 104 degrees F to destroy eggs and larvae
• Keeping grass taller than 3 inches to minimize larvae ingestion
• Dragging fields on hot days to expose larvae in manure to temperatures they cannot survive
• Implementing pasture rotation, which disrupts the parasite life cycle
• Stocking pastures with an appropriate number of horses (one horse per acre at minimum) to reduce grazing around manure
• Renovating pastures for better forage options
• Including other species in the pastures with horses so different plants get eaten

Read more at The Horse.

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