Ringworm in Pets: Treating It and Protecting the Household

If a vet has mentioned ringworm and your first thought was deworming tablets, you are far from the first. The name is thoroughly unhelpful.

Ringworm is a fungal skin infection, closely related to athlete's foot, and it has nothing to do with worms. What matters practically is that it passes readily between animals and people, that the spores survive in a house for months, and that treating the animal while ignoring the environment is the reason so many households find themselves dealing with it twice.

What it looks like

The textbook picture is a circular patch of hair loss with a scaly centre, most often on the face, ears, paws or tail. In practice it is frequently less tidy than that.

• Patchy hair loss, circular or irregular
• Scaly, crusty or flaking skin in the affected area
• Broken hairs that look stubbly rather than cleanly bald, because the fungus infects the hair shaft itself
• Mild itch, or none at all. Ringworm is often far less itchy than owners expect, which is one reason it is missed
• Darkened or thickened claws where nails are involved

In cats, particularly long-haired cats, it can be almost invisible. A cat can carry and spread it while looking entirely normal, which is how a household ends up with an itchy child and a cat nobody suspected.

What it is confused with

Almost everything else that causes hair loss, which is why guessing is a poor strategy:

• Demodectic mange, which also gives patchy hair loss around the face in young animals
• Flea allergy and other allergic skin disease
• Bacterial infection, which produces circular scaly patches that look strikingly similar
• Over-grooming in cats, where the cat is removing the hair itself

These need entirely different treatment. An antifungal cream applied to bacterial infection achieves nothing except a delay.

How it is diagnosed

Three methods, and it is worth knowing why more than one may be used.

• Ultraviolet lamp. Quick, and useful, but only about half of the relevant fungal species glow. A negative lamp does not rule ringworm out, which surprises people
• Microscopy of plucked hairs, looking for spores on the hair shaft. Fast and often conclusive
• Fungal culture, the definitive answer, which takes one to three weeks because the fungus has to grow. This is the one that identifies the species and confirms when treatment has actually worked

The wait on a culture is frustrating when you have an itchy household, but treatment usually starts before the result rather than after it.

Treatment

Straightforward, and slower than most people are expecting. Six weeks is common and longer is not unusual.

• Oral antifungal medication for anything beyond a single small patch. This is the part that clears infection in the hair follicle, where creams cannot reach
• Antifungal shampoo or dips, typically twice weekly, which reduce the shedding of spores into the house as much as they treat the animal
• Clipping long coats in some cases, to let the topical treatment actually reach skin
• Topical cream for isolated small lesions, though rarely on its own

The single most common reason ringworm drags on is stopping when the coat looks better. Hair regrows before the fungus is gone. Treatment should continue until a repeat culture is negative, not until the patch has filled in.

The part households get wrong

Infected animals shed spores continuously on hair and skin flakes, and those spores stay viable in a house for well over a year. Treating the pet perfectly while leaving the environment alone reinfects the pet.

1. Confine the animal to one easily cleaned room while treatment gets going, ideally without carpet or soft furnishings
2. Vacuum daily and dispose of the contents rather than emptying them back into the house. Hair is the vehicle
3. Damp-mop hard floors rather than sweeping, which sends spores into the air
4. Wash bedding hot, twice through if you can, and be prepared to discard soft items that cannot be washed properly
5. Disinfect hard surfaces with a product effective against fungal spores. Ordinary household cleaners are not reliable here, and diluted bleach is
6. Clean grooming tools and collars, or replace them. Brushes are an efficient way to move ringworm around a household

People in the house

Ringworm passes to humans easily, and children, elderly relatives and anyone with a weakened immune system are most susceptible. In people it usually shows as an itchy red ring on the arms, neck or scalp.

• Wear gloves when handling or treating the animal, and wash hands thoroughly afterwards
• Keep the animal off beds and away from soft furnishings during treatment
• Anyone who develops a rash should see a doctor and say plainly that the household is treating ringworm in a pet. It changes the diagnosis immediately

None of this makes the animal dangerous. It makes it a temporary source of something that needs handling sensibly for a few weeks.

Other animals in the house

Every animal in the household should be examined, not only the one with visible lesions. Cats in particular carry it without signs, and treating one animal in a multi-pet home is a common route to a second round three months later.

Where several animals are involved, a vet may recommend treating all of them regardless of whether they look affected. That feels excessive and is usually cheaper than doing it twice.

Why some animals get it

Exposure matters, but so does the animal. Puppies and kittens, elderly animals, those on immune-suppressing medication and those in crowded or stressful conditions are far more susceptible. A previously healthy adult animal that develops ringworm sometimes has an underlying reason worth investigating.

Ringworm is inexpensive to treat and expensive to get wrong. The costs are the culture, the medication over six weeks, and the repeat culture to confirm it has actually gone. It is that last one that gets skipped, usually because the animal looks fine and money is finite, and skipping it is precisely how a household spends the following year passing it back and forth.

Consultations, diagnostics and treatment at any vet clinic in Nigeria are covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans, so the confirmatory test at the end stops being an optional extra and becomes simply the last step.