As I understand it, an ainfected mosquito bites your cat or dog and transmits the filarii to their bloodstream, where the larvae eventually settle and grow around the heart. Why don’t humans get this disease?
StG
Well, sometimeswe do ::::shudder:::: though rarely.
My WAG is we simply don’t provide the tastiest habitat for your average heartworm, or perhaps the same skeeters that transmit to dogs aren’t so fond of the taste of human blood. But any port in a storm if they get desperate enough, which would presumably explain the few actual cases.
i stumbled upon this disgusting article after doing some wikitraining:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myiasis
if you want to sqirum, i highly suggest clicking the image on the top of the wiki article
The worms grow and live in the pulmonary arteries. They go to the heart when it gets too crowded in the main pulmonary arteries.
Most parasites are host-adapted. Means they want one (or a few) hosts and can live and reproduce happily in them.
For some reason (I’m not doing a lit search on this right now, sorry), dog pulmonary arteries is D. immitis niche.
Even cats are aberrant hosts. But cats are more likely to get the parasite than humans, and more likely to have severe side effets (ie sudden death) than humans (or dogs). In cats, the parasite burden is usually much less than those in clinically affected dogs (even one may cause problem), they don’t thrive, and their reproductive success is low.
Thank you. I was getting really bored with all my old nightmares.