Scabies ?

[Avril]

Just came back from vet and they think that they have scabies ?/ what is this? she injected them with ivermectin and i have to go back in next week to see if they are improving , whats your opinion on this

 

[Bekki]

Its just a bug thing

Humans can get it too, my dad caught it off a bus! some lotion fixed him though and it was pretty simple to treat :-)

 

[Pebble]

Often vets will use human terms to describe the problem in a guinea pig witout realising how misleading this can be - many times i have heard people being told by the vet that their guinea pig has a cold - guinea pigs can;t get cold viruses - but they can get bacterial infections of both the upper (URI) and lower (LRI - pbeumonia) respiratory tract.

So just to clarify:

Scabies is a human disase caused by a burrowing mite that has a preference for humans not guinea pigs.

Guinea pigs can get a different type of burrowing mite which causes more severe symptoms and if not treated can cause baldness, severe skin sores, fitting and ultimately death. The correct name for this disease is sarcoptic mange or acariasis. This mite does not transfer to humans.

Guinea pigs can also get other types of mites (often called static lice to add to the confusion) which are less severe but need to be treated nevertheless as they cause irritation.

The treatment for both these conditions is ivermectin and in view of the fact that your vet clearly thinks it is the more severe of the two then injections (three in total - one every 7-10 days to break the mite life cycle) will be required instead of the topical spot-on treatments widely available.

Hope this helps
x

 

[Amanda1801]

Often vets will use human terms to describe the problem in a guinea pig witout realising how misleading this can be - many times i have heard people being told by the vet that their guinea pig has a cold - guinea pigs can;t get cold viruses - but they can get bacterial infections of both the upper (URI) and lower (LRI - pbeumonia) respiratory tract.

So just to clarify:

Scabies is a human disase caused by a burrowing mite that has a preference for humans not guinea pigs.

Guinea pigs can get a different type of burrowing mite which causes more severe symptoms and if not treated can cause baldness, severe skin sores, fitting and ultimately death. The correct name for this disease is sarcoptic mange or acariasis. This mite does not transfer to humans.

Guinea pigs can also get other types of mites (often called static lice to add to the confusion) which are less severe but need to be treated nevertheless as they cause irritation.

The treatment for both these conditions is ivermectin and in view of the fact that your vet clearly thinks it is the more severe of the two then injections (three in total - one every 7-10 days to break the mite life cycle) will be required instead of the topical spot-on treatments widely available.

Hope this helps
x

Do pigs not get sarcoptes scabiei?

 

[Pebble]

Do pigs not get sarcoptes scabiei?

Very rarely.

The main sarcoptic mite infecting guinea pigs is actually Trixacarus caviae. Harkness and Wagner report that previous early reports of sarcoptes scabiei infection in pigs were misdiagnosed and were probably in fact trixicarus.

For a pig to get sarcoptes scabiei it would have to be infected from another active zoonotic source in the near vicinity (human/cat/dog)

x

 

[Amanda1801]

Very rarely.

The main sarcoptic mite infecting guinea pigs is actually Trixacarus caviae. Harkness and Wagner report that previous early reports of sarcoptes scabiei infection in pigs were misdiagnosed and were probably in fact trixicarus.

For a pig to get sarcoptes scabiei it would have to be infected from another active zoonotic source in the near vicinity (human/cat/dog)

x

Ah thats interesting stuff. I really like parasitology actually. Even though there was a very very (very!) boring man professor called Trevor at Nottingham uni who nearly put me off for life!