First report of Aelurostrongylus abstrusus in the domestic land snail Rumina decollata.

CARDILLO, N.; CANAVERI, M.; GAIAD, F.; CLEMENTE, A.; PASQUALETTI, M.; ROSA, A.; RIBICICH, M.

VETERINARY PARASITOLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2011 vol. ----

0304-4017

Aelurostrongylus abstrusus (Railliet, 1898) is a worldwide distributed lungworm that affects the respiratory tract of wild and domestic cats, causing bronchopneumonia of varying intensity. Cats acquire the parasite by eating slugs and snails with the infective larval stage of A. abstrusus. The land snail Rumina decollata could be a potencial reservoir of the parasite because of their feeding habits on animal faeces. The aimed of this report was to study the potencial of the domestic snail R. decollata as intermediate host of A. abstrusus for domestic cats. Cats’ faeces and adult R. decollata snails were collected from a public Institution of the city of Buenos Aires. Cats’ faeces were processed by Baermman´s technique and snails were digested in pools by artificial digestion technique. First stage larvae were recovered from 35.29 % (6/17) of the faeces. An 80 % (20/25) of the pools were positive for third stage A. abstrusus larvae; the mean value of larvae per gram of snail was 67.67. This report confirms that Rumina decollata could act as an intermediate host of A. abstrusus, since the relationship between high levels of infection larvae in the snails and in cats’ faeces could be demonstrated in a place inhabit by cats.