Pesquisa de Dirofilaria immitis em cães com filaremia no Brejo Paraibano.

Abstract

The heartworm of the dog, Dirofilaria immitis, is the most important filarid in veterinary med- icine and is considered one of the most pathogenic parasites and the most common cause of

pulmonary hypertension in this species. In order to find out the frequency of Dirofilaria im- mitis in dogs attended at the Veterinary Hospital of UFPB, in the Brejo micro-region of Paraí- ba state, Northeast Brazil, 10 dogs were tested, 9 males and 1 female, both of differ-ent races

and ages, older than 6 months, who presented microfilaremia detected in cytological evalua- tion of blood smears out of a total of 719 dogs. The technique used for serological diagnosis

was the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA- comercial kit) that detect the parasite

antigen. No dogs tested positive in serology, which may suggest that animals with microfila- remia at the region studied are not infected with D. immitis, but possibly with another filarid.