An automated fluorescent immunoassay technique (FIAX; International Diagnostic Technology, Santa Clara, Calif.) has been developed for the quantitation of circulating antibodies in dogs infected with Dirofilaria immitis. Two groups of sera, group I consisting of 77 samples and group II consisting of 126 samples, were obtained from experimentally infected microfilaremic dogs, known negative cont...

Received: Revised: Accepted: December 21, 2010 May 03, 2011 May 04, 2011

OBJECTIVE To determine prevalences of heartworm exposure (ie, positive heartworm antibody test results) and heartworm infection (ie, positive heartworm antigen test results or identification of mature heartworms at necropsy) among nondomestic cats housed in an area in rural North Carolina where Dirofilaria immitis is known to be endemic and among nondomestic cats housed in areas with a low prev...

Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis) are endemic to six of the eight California Channel Islands (USA). The island fox is classified as a threatened species by the State of California, and recently three of the six subspecies have experienced abrupt population declines. As part of a continuing effort to determine the cause of the declines, we tested island fox serum samples collected in 1988 (n = 1...

The prevalence of Ehrlichia and Anaplasma in 1,427 dogs from 32 Japanese prefectures was evaluated by PCR and DNA nucleotide sequencing. PCR screening demonstrated that 18 dogs (1.3%) were positive for Anaplasmataceae. Sequence analysis revealed that 14 of the amplicons were most closely related to Wolbachia spp., symbionts of Dirofilaria immitis, whereas three were identified as Anaplasma bovi...

Microfilariae of Dirofilaria immitis were recovered from an experimentally infected dog and inoculated intravenously into adult female BALB/c mice. Each mouse received 1 X 10(5) microfilariae. In one experiment mice were sublethally irradiated with gamma radiation 24 h prior to microfilarial inoculation; microfilariae were counted at 11.00 and 23.00 h 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42 days after inocula...

DIROFILARIA IMMITIS by CHRISTOPHER CHARLES EVANS (Under the Direction of Ray M. Kaplan) ABSTRACT The canine heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis) is a widespread parasitic filarial nematode of veterinary importance. Anthelmintics of the macrocyclic lactone (ML) drug class have been widely and effectively used in chemoprophylaxis, but an increased number of lack of efficacy reports, in which dogs deve...

BACKGROUND Dirofilariasis is a serious and potentially deadly condition in dogs and one of the zoonotic filarial infections, which inadvertently affects the humans. The objectives of this study were to determine the seroprevalence and the molecular identity of dirofilariasis in Kerman Province, southeastern Iran between Jul and Aug 2013. METHODS A hundred and forty-nine domestic dogs were ran...

The present study was performed to investigate the seroprevalence and risk factors for Dirofilaria immitis infection in cats from Liaoning province, northeastern China. From October 2014 to September 2016, sera of 651 cats, including 364 domestic cats and 287 feral cats (332 females and 319 males) were assessed. They were tested for the presence of D. immitis antigen using SNAP Heartworm RT tes...