it can be deadly<\/a>. <\/p>\nIf ingested, the worms can cause severe headaches, stiff neck, the sensation of tingling or painful skin, low-grade fever, nausea, vomiting, coma and sometimes death. People who eat freshwater crab, prawns, frogs, snails and slugs are at greatest risk. However, people can also get the disease by eating un-rinsed produce that\u2019s been slimed by a snail or slug, or eating a slug or snail that was chopped up in produce. The worms need moisture, however; if the produce is dry, the worms will die. <\/p>\n
Domestic animals, including dogs and cats, are also at risk.<\/p>\n
Officials with the California Department of Public Health were not ready to call the disease endemic, or established, in the state. <\/p>\n
\u201cAdditional surveillance and testing will be necessary to determine whether the detections of rat lungworm in the animals evaluated in San Diego County represent an isolated introduction of the parasite or ongoing local transmission,\u201d spokeswoman Elizabeth Manzo wrote in a statement to The Times. <\/p>\n
The department said it is not aware of rat lungworm outside San Diego County, and has seen no human cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the San Diego study affirms that the parasite can be introduced to California through movement of infected animals from endemic areas,\u201d the statement said. \u201cBecause some species of snails and slugs present in California are capable of serving as hosts for rat lungworm, and the presence of the parasite in other parts of the state is unknown, it is advised to take certain food safety precautions. Persons should not consume any raw or undercooked wild snails or slugs, and should thoroughly wash all produce before consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n
The worms that cause the disease, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, are native to Southeast Asia. They\u2019ve been found in the U.S. since the 1960s \u2014 including in isolated human and zoo animal cases in California \u2014 and are established in Hawaii as well as in much of the southeastern U.S.<\/p>\n
It is believed they came overseas via rats on boats.<\/p>\n
The worms favored environment is the moist, warm bed of a rat\u2019s lung. When a rat is infected, the worms cause respiratory distress, priming the rodent to cough. Worm-filled sputum is then ejected into the rat\u2019s mouth, and swallowed. The rat then poops the worms out, and animals such as slugs and snails eat the poop. When a rat eats an infected invertebrate, the cycle begins again.<\/p>\n
Occasionally, another animal, such as a raccoon or dog, or a person, will accidentally eat an infected animal, or the slime of one, and contract the disease.<\/p>\n
The discovery of the worm in San Diego County rodents and opossums was made by staff at the San Diego Zoo and a local wildlife rehabilitation center, Project Wildlife, which is run by the San Diego Humane Society. <\/p>\n
In December 2024, a 7-year-old male parma wallaby, born and raised at the zoo, began showing concerning neurological behaviors: incessant head shaking, blindness, a lack of muscle coordination and paralysis in his hind legs. He was euthanized after 11 days in the zoo infirmary. <\/p>\n
When zoo staff examined the body, they found six rat lungworms in the marsupial\u2019s brain, along with a lot of damage.<\/p>\n
Because the diagnosis was so unusual, zoo staff examined the bodies of 64 free-ranging roof rats that had either been euthanized in the course of regular pest control or found dead on the property. Two, a little more than 3%, had lungworms. Their feces had them too: \u201cnumerous live … larvae with coiled posterior ends.\u201d The larvae, roughly 300 in each poop sample, were each about the size of a grain of sand.<\/p>\n
Officials at the San Diego Zoo did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Curiously, at the same time the zoo investigation was underway, staff from Project Wildlife had been dealing with sick opossums brought to them from around the county. Tests of 10 dead animals showed seven carried the lungworms.<\/p>\n
Many people and animals remain asymptomatic when they\u2019re infected. Symptoms typically appear within hours or days after ingestion and can last up to eight weeks. The worms will eventually die.<\/p>\n
Because the disease has so many varied symptoms, health officials say it can go undiagnosed and untreated. Health officials from Hawaii, where the disease is endemic, say if lungworms are suspected, it\u2019s best to be treated as soon as possible \u2014 even before lab results come back.<\/p>\n
The CDC too notes that treatment works best when the disease is caught early, and can consist of high doses of corticosteroids, lumbar punctures for symptomatic relief of headaches, and antiparasitic medications, such as albendazole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A disease that can cause neurological illness and meningitis in people, rat lungworm, has been found in wild…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1592,7,9,8,4719,95667,3335,70242,592,55392,22178,84,95668,95669,5560,95670,95666],"class_list":["post-207325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-animal","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-disease","tag-neuro-disease-rat-lungworm","tag-official","tag-parasite","tag-people","tag-rat","tag-researcher","tag-san-diego-county","tag-slug","tag-snail","tag-staff","tag-un-rinsed-produce","tag-worm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}