Saturday, March 12, 2016

Keeping pets safe from rat lungworm, and evidence based medicine

Snails aren't just a problem for flowers. They carry the parasite rat lungworm which can affect companion animals and wildlife.

Rat lungworm is a parasite you really want to avoid. Angiostrongylus cantonensis is found in approximately 5 per cent of ordinary garden snails in Sydney and surrounds, and according to colleagues Professor Richard Malik and Derek Spielman, it may be more common in Brisbane. It can cause severe, nasty signs in affected dogs (and human children or adults who eat snails).
They’ve written this article in The Conversation about rat lungworm with some important pointers on keeping humans and animals safe.

Importantly its not just a matter of eliminating snails and rats - products designed to kill rats, snails and slugs can also kill other animals if ingested.

This week fellow blogger SkeptVet has shared some great posts on evidence based veterinary medicine with some lecture slides that are worth a read.

Can we really trust the scientific literature?


Evidence based veterinary medicine in the trenches


What you know that ain’t necessarily so



Happy weekend, folks!