Dog Ownership and Risk for Alveolar Echinococcosis, Germany

Overview

Journal Emerg Infect Dis

Specialty Infectious Diseases

Date 2022 Jul 19

PMID 35850154

Authors

Julian Schmidberger

Janne Uhlenbruck

Patrycja Schlingeloff

Pavlo Maksimov

Franz J Conraths

Benjamin Mayer

Wolfgang Kratzer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Human alveolar echinococcosis is caused by the parasite Echinococcus multilocularis, and dog ownership has been identified as a risk factor. We sought to specify the factors of dog ownership underlying this risk by conducting a case-control study among dog owners in Germany. The analysis revealed an increased odds ratio of ≈7-fold for dog owners whose dogs roam unattended in fields, 13-fold for dog owners who feed their dogs organic waste daily, 4-fold for dog owners who take their dog to a veterinarian only in case of illness, and 10-fold for dog owners who have never been informed by a veterinarian about the risk for infection. The results highlight the risk for infection associated with various factors of dog ownership and the value of veterinarians informing owners about prevention.

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