Meep Has Ringworm?

[Anvil]

Hiya,

I just wanna say thanks in advance for any advice given.

Meep is a 2 year old usually healthy piggy, she lives happily inside with 8 others.

About six weeks (wheeeeeks) ago she started getting a little red lump in each of her eyes. Looked it up and it looks similar to pea eye. Last week she had a small patch of what looked like eczema on her eye, two days later it was as you see in the attached photos.

I took her to my vet and she has took scab and hair folicle sample and said before she gives me treatment for ringworm she had to test it actually was ringworm.

She has given me antibiotics for the 'pea eye' and lumps have practically vanished.

I'm just wondering if her eye looks like it has ringworm or something else. I do know that it's not mites etc but I just worry as i don't want it spreading. My vet also said that if it is ringworm then it's difficult to treat around the eye area! Isn't there some kind of medicine I could give her orally if that were the case?

Thank you

Oh and none of my other pigs have this, it's only meep

 

[VickiA]

I'm no vet but my experience of ringworm/other fungal is it does look like Meep's eye - plaques, hairloss and itching. Intrafungol or sporanox are the oral medications that vets in the UK use. They can be given without the definitive diagnosis from the scrape. Mabel's scrapes came back negative for ringworm yet she responded to the treatment.

 

[Swissgreys]

I also had a pig that presented with what looked like signs of possible fungal.
The vet took samples for culture, but before the results came back we started treating for fungal anyway.
We only treated the symptomatic pig, and the ringworm tests came back negative.
If they had been positive we would have treated all the pigs.
As it was the treatment cured the problem, and none of the other pigs ever developed it.

 

[Anvil]

Thanks for the reply.

My vet said she'd give meep the medication to see if it would get rid of lump in each eye (which it has) and then start her on medication for suspected ringworm once results are back. She said that lumps in the eyes can indicate tumours in the body - does that sound right to you?

 

[Wiebke]

Hiya,

I just wanna say thanks in advance for any advice given.

Meep is a 2 year old usually healthy piggy, she lives happily inside with 8 others.

About six weeks (wheeeeeks) ago she started getting a little red lump in each of her eyes. Looked it up and it looks similar to pea eye. Last week she had a small patch of what looked like eczema on her eye, two days later it was as you see in the attached photos.

I took her to my vet and she has took scab and hair folicle sample and said before she gives me treatment for ringworm she had to test it actually was ringworm.

She has given me antibiotics for the 'pea eye' and lumps have practically vanished.

I'm just wondering if her eye looks like it has ringworm or something else. I do know that it's not mites etc but I just worry as i don't want it spreading. My vet also said that if it is ringworm then it's difficult to treat around the eye area! Isn't there some kind of medicine I could give her orally if that were the case?

Thank you

Oh and none of my other pigs have this, it's only meepView attachment 60834View attachment 60835

Hi! It looks like fungal; but it is impossible to say whether it is ringworm or not. You have to treat it as potentially ringworm and take all the precautions unless you know for sure to the contrary.

There is oral systemic medication that is safe for guinea pigs and is increasingly used for treating ringworm by piggy savvy vets. It is a cat product with the active ingredient itraconazole. In the UK it is marketed as itrafungol. It is very effective and usually works within a week. If your vet is happy to prescribe it, it is a lot less hassle for the piggy and a lot less risk for you to infect yourself compared to 3-7 dips of topical anti-fungal baths every 3 days. A dip is where you let the shampoo dry in the skin as opposed to a bath where you rinse.
Itrafungol is not quite cheap and it is prescription only, so you have to get it through your vet. But it is definitely worth it - I have been through ringworm with a large group either way over the years.

If you want to treat topically, enilconazole/imaverol (Online available from Hyperdrug) is mild enough to use very carefully (with a cotton bud) around the eyes. You will need to bathe all your piggies within 10 days of the first outbreak if it is ringworm in order to prevent an outbreak in the others (as infection has likely already happened) and to remove any spores sitting in their fur. I would strongly recommend to separate your acutely infected girl for the duration and two week quarantine afterwards.

It is also important to invest in a disinfectant that works against fungal and ideally is known to kill ringworm spores. For the UK, this is F10.

Please take the time to carefully read our ringworm care guide. It is going to be a few very busy weeks with extra work, but it is well worth it if you want to get rid of it once and for all.
Ringworm: Hygiene And Pictures

I don't think that the lumps in the eyes are directly connected, but ringworm is one of those opportunists that pounce when the immune system is lowered either from illness or stress or is still developing. I have not heard about the connection with a tumour.