PRAZIQUANTEL!?!?

Tavishi

Whoops. Kinda got sucked into the AP exams - dance exams - high school ending black hole. You know I'm busy when I don't have time for Kradigan :( Nevertheless, I persist!

Life updates:

• Dyed my hair blue again

• Am actually going to college (crazy beans on toast moment)

• Dog learned how to drive a car!

Since then, I've also refallen down the pathoparasitology and pharmacology hole. I'm trapped in this hole, and now, I am a mole person. I live in the holes. We built society. I live inside the core of the Earth, where I crave the heat and the praziquantel.

Two of my favorite antiparasitics are praziquantel and febantel. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of praziquantel.

Praziquantel, as with all the other drugs listed above, is used to treat parasitic worms. Specifically, praziquantel is most effective at the elimination of tapeworms and flukes. Praziquantel is one of the most commonly administered antiparasitic drugs in shelter medicine. At the AZ Humane Society, I got to help administer it to quite a few disgruntled, tiny, menacing little kittens.

The most common tapeworm species found in both dogs and cats is Dipylidium caninum. Interestingly enough, these tapeworms first infect a flea, and when said flea is chomped by a crispy kitten, the kitten consequently develops a tapeworm. Tapeworm life cycle?! Anyways, fleas are very, very common in stray kitties. Because of this, it's pretty much presumed that any stray animal that comes into a shelter has tapeworms and fleas, and they're hit with a dose of praziquantel no matter what.

bad wyrms go in the woorm centrifuge >:(

Praziquantel is one of the really cool drugs that interferes with worm neuromuscular stuff. Essentially, it overwhelms the worms and causes too much muscle contraction to the point of paralysis and death.

mfw paralyz! 231fasdkjflasd

That's a very, very general description, but still holds true. Praziquantel increases the permeability of muscle cells in tapeworms to calcium, inducing muscular contraction. Neuromuscular junctions near the scolex of the tapeworm are generally targeted more than the rest of the body.

Additionally, the drug disrupts the syncytial tegument, or the outer covering of the body, through the process of vacuolization.

Taken into combination, paralysis and syncytial tegument, makes the tapeworms both more susceptible to host immune attacks and easy to pass out.

This post was kinda short, but I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting after my month-long hiatus... oops.