Hepatozoon

The Hepatozoon canis is a protozoan that inhabits the peripheral blood of domestic dogs. The natural host is a tick, Amblyomma maculatum. It reaches its sexual maturity in this tick. The tick obtains gametocytes from the neutrophils or monocytes in the peripheral blood of a dog. The gametocytes the come together to form an ookinete. The ookinete then go into the stomach of the tick and become an oocyst. Several Sporocysts form inside of an oocyst and these sporocysts contain 12-24 sporozoites. Dogs can get this infection by ingesting a tick with the sporulated oocysts or another animal that has ingested such a tick. Once ingested the sporozoites are released from the tick an enter into the intestinal epithelium of the dog and then they start traveling to other tissues in the body. It enters the leukocytes of the laminia propria, as well as the regional lymph nodes or liver. These sporozites are then transferred to body tissues where merogony can occur. Merozites are formed and then released to inhabit another cell. After this cycle happens a few times merozoites inhabit leukocytes …show more content…
The symptoms are periodic or persistent fever, muscle atrophy, weakness, generalized pain, mucous discharge from the eyes, not wanting to move, and they will slowly deteriorate. Nonregenerative anemia, and elevation in serum alkaline phosphatase along with neutrophilic leukocytosis is seen in lab results. Dogs may not quit eating and drinking. If this disease is not treated eventually the dog will waste away. A reliable serologic test has not been made so prevalence is hard to determine. Most likely genetics, breed or age of the dogs are not a very important factor in obtaining this disease. Dogs that are allowed to hunt are at bigger risk for this parasite. Symptoms won’t start to show until around 4-10 weeks after the dog has ingeted the tick, and the gametocytes can be seen in the blood between 5-10 weeks after