![]() ![]() This also makes bathing with an anti-fungal shampoo more effective. Long haired animals, like Persian cats, tend to recover faster and shed less contaminated hair into the environment if they are shaved. Unfortunately that may take a few months, and in the meantime they are dropping infected hairs around the house that may serve as sources of infection to other people and animals living there too. If it is completely ignored most animals will eventually get their immune systems to wake up and figure out how to kick the ringworm on their own. When we get a positive result there are several effective ways to treat ringworm. If the quick and easy diagnostic test doesn’t yield results and ringworm is still on the suspect list we will gather some hair samples and start a fungal culture on a special growth medium that turns red in a few days in the presence of the ringworm fungus. ![]() Some types of ringworm cling to the hair shafts and flouresce brightly when exposed to ultraviolet light. When we suspect a patient has ringworm the first diagnostic test is to look at the affected areas under UV light-also known as using the CSI “clue wand”. Persian cats in particular seem to have a reduced resistance to ringworm. Although adults certainly can develop ringworm, we see it much more commonly in very young animals, and it is much more common in cats than it is in dogs or other mammal species. In this area ringworm is not very common. There are a number of ways to separate ringworm from other common skin problems. Of course that description would also be accurate for about 300 other skin conditions that are not ringworm, so just because an animal has an itchy or crusty skin condition does not mean that it is ringworm or even likely to be ringworm. In animals the visual appearance of a ringworm infection can much more variable, ranging from patches of hair loss where the skin may be flaky or scabby to a more diffuse pattern of generalized itchiness. Ringworm is a fungal infection of the skin and hair that in people tends to cause red spots that spread outward in a circular pattern leaving a clear spot in the center, thus forming a red ring on the skin. The “worm” part of ringworm is really a misnomer. ![]() Fortunately, the reality of ringworm is not quite as dramatic as what is generally imagined. The most upsetting part of the diagnosis is that ringworm is a zoonotic disease, meaning that it can be spread from animals to people. “Your pet has ringworm.” Those are words that conjure images of grimy living conditions, sores and patches of hair loss springing up on everyone within a 200 mile radius of the affected animal. ![]()
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