Dr. Lera Clone walks through ringworm in a 7-year-old Persian cat named Pearl. The fungus spreads to humans, clears on its own in 70 to 100 days, but spores linger on surfaces. Treatment takes 5 to 6 weeks minimum: lime sulfur dips (weekly, smelly, may stain white fur) plus oral itraconazole, with household bleach disinfection.
Questions this video answers
7 years old (female Persian).
About 70 to 100 days.
Several months to a few years.
Once to twice a week until two negative cultures (typically about 5–6 weeks minimum).
Itraconazole.
Chapters
Hey guys. Dr. Lira, today I am here with Pearl. Pearl is a 7 year old female Persian and she's coming in today all the way from Ontario, Canada. And she's here today because she has a history of licking her forearm a lot. She's seen two other veterinarians and they were concerned about the possibility of ringworm. So today's video is going to be focused on ringworm. Now sometimes certain breed, certain diseases will have certain breeds that are predisposed to it or seem to be more likely to get it. And the list of cats, cat breeds that are more prone to ringworms starts with Persian and ends with Persian. And so, and all the cats, the cat breeds in between are Persian. So if you're not getting my message, Persians are really prone to this kind of stuff. Now ringworm is something, one of the few diseases that is potentially transmissible from cats to humans and from humans to cats. It is something that normally in most patients, cats, dogs and humans is what we call a self limiting disease, which means within about 70 to 100 days, usually the condition should be resolved. If you don't have any open cuts, like I have a scratch over here or something like that, as long as you don't have any open wounds or anything like that, your skin actually has a protective barrier and, and there's something that your skin normally secretes which actually has what we call fungus static effects. So it's actually almost something that helps to kill bacteria or prevent, not bacteria to prevent ringworm from growing. Now if your cat ends up actually having it, it is something that can be transmitted in the hair of cats. And that hair, if there's actual spores in the cat's hair, a ringworm spores is what we call the microscopic unit, I guess of ringworms. They can last up to several months to a few years in the particular environment. So the main reason for treating cats with ringworm is more so to go ahead and prevent the spread rather than because it's going to be such a miserable disease and it's going to go on for a long period of time and that kind of stuff. Now when treating cats, the first topical treatment of choice is something called a lime sulfur dip. And so if any of you guys have ever been to sulfur springs, they smell horrible. It smells like a rotten egg. It is something that is extremely effective for cats. The lime sulfur dip is, it is something that they stink. And a lot of times with white cats, they may end up being kind of yellow afterwards. And so that would be something that you should be Prepared for not only for the potential change in color a little bit, but also the smell. The color does normally go away. And usually this is something where the cats have to be dipped in this particular solution. Then it has to be allowed to dry. So it's usually going to drop something. You're going to drop your pet off at the veterinarian. They're going to go ahead and do it. They'll be there for a few hours while the patients are drying, and then they'll go home. The color will go. The yellow tinge or color will go away. This is usually something that's done once to twice a week until you get two negative cultures. So a lot of times it's going to be about five to six weeks minimum. The other thing is it is usually also recommended that you go ahead and you give them an oral medication as well or systemic medication. In cats, the medication of choice is called itraconazole. That is an antifungal. Again, you're going to continue with that particular therapy for the period of time until the cultures come back negative. You have two separate negatives. Okay. The other thing to take into consideration, we talked about the potential for spreading. We talked about the potential for the treatment if humans could potentially get it. And also, you know, kind of what the. You know, whether or not it would actually hurt the cats. Now, she's wearing this particular cone right now because mom and dad, our mom is saying that she looks really, really aggressively if she has the cone off. The other things that we are wondering if she potentially has is maybe some mange or food allergies. But because she is a Persian, the test, the way that we would go about testing it is we would go ahead and collect some hair and potentially some bodily secretions, and we would send that off to the lab to do what's called a PCR panel. And so what they're doing is they're checking for DNA or RNA material of ringworms, and then. And usually you should get the results back within about one to four days. So that's a really quick turnaround. Versus with the culture, it'll take about two to three weeks to get those results back. In regards to culturing, normally, you should not have any sort of systemic, so pills, liquid, whatever, or topical therapy in the system or on the cat for a minimum of two weeks. So Pearl literally just got bathed yesterday. So I talked to mom about the fact that I don't recommend going ahead and bathing her or not in here, but culturing her for another two weeks in regards to disinfecting your house, you can use a 1 to 10 to a 1 to 32 dilution of bleach, and that's something that is shown to go ahead and have a very, very effective result in killing the ringworm. Even with the dilute bleach being on the surface for a short period of time. The one thing that you guys do need to keep in mind is when you dilute the bleach, you need to make sure that you use it quickly because it will usually start degrading rather relatively quickly. If you guys have any questions or concerns, please leave it in the comment box. If you guys have anything else, let us know. Thanks for watching. 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