Parvovirus in dogs

Parvovirus is a gastrointestinal virus that mainly damages gastrointestinal epithelial cells, causing damage to the gastrointestinal tract and shedding of gastrointestinal mucosa, causing symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea. Some parvoviruses can damage myocardial cells, leading to myocarditis and rapid death of puppies in a short period of time.
Parvovirus is mainly divided into two types of manifestations. One is the gastrointestinal type with vomiting and diarrhea as the main symptoms. It is more common in dogs of any age who have weak resistance to parvovirus. Another type of myocarditis with myocarditis as the main symptom is more common in puppies under 2 months old.

Parvovirus symptoms in dogs

The mortality rate after parvovirus infection can be as high as more than 50%, and the mortality rate for myocarditis type is close to 100%. Early symptoms include vomiting yellow water, watery loose stools, poor energy, and loss of appetite. When the condition worsens, symptoms such as soy sauce or ketchup-colored bloody stools, massive vomiting of gastric juice, vomiting of blood, loss of appetite, inability to lie down, severe dehydration, and even shock may occur.

Parvovirus treatment methods

If parvovirus is diagnosed, infusion treatment is recommended. Because parvovirus can cause vomiting, the pet cannot eat in this case and needs to be provided with nutrition through infusion. During treatment, antiemetics should be used to relieve vomiting symptoms. When the vomiting symptoms are relieved (no vomiting occurs again about 4-6 hours after the last vomiting), you can start trying to feed easily digestible food.

If the food irritates the dog's stomach and the dog vomits without recurrence, oral antidiarrheal drugs can be added to the food. The amount of feeding in the early stage must be small to prevent feeding too much food, which will increase the burden on the stomach and cause repeated vomiting. In addition to basic nutrient solutions, it is also necessary to use highly effective biological agents such as interferons, parvomonoclonal antibodies, and leukodin, and systemic infections must also be controlled.

The course of parvovirus is about 7-10 days. After the virus breaks out in the body in the early stage, it will continue to reproduce and replicate, increase its virulence, and the condition will continue to worsen. When the number of viruses reaches its peak, the disease course enters its peak period, during which the dog mortality rate is highest. After the dog persists past the peak period, the condition will enter the remission period, the number of viruses will begin to decrease, and the virulence will also begin to weaken. Dogs that have reached this stage can generally survive as long as their physical condition is not too bad. The peak period is generally 3-5 days after diagnosis. If the peak period can be passed safely, the cure rate will be greatly improved.

There will be many complications during parvovirus treatment, such as intussusception, sepsis, pyloric edema, etc. Once complications occur, minor treatments will undoubtedly become more difficult.