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Abstract
The apparent prevalence of endoparasitic infections of cats and dogs presented to
the small animal Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was measured
between 1984 and 1991. Two thousand feline and 8077 canine fecal samples were examined
along with 6830 canine blood samples. The overall mean monthly prevalence of feline
infections was 16% for ascarids, 0.9% for hookworms, 4.0% for tapeworms, 2.4% for
Giardia spp. and 4.2% for coccidia. The overall mean monthly prevalence of canine
infections was 5.7% for ascarids, 9.7% for hookworms, 9.7% for whipworms. 1.8% for
tapeworms, 4.7% for Giardia spp. and 3.1% for coccidia. There was a significant downward
trend in the prevalence of hookworms and heartworms in dogs (P < 0.001 in both cases).
There was a significant upward trend in the prevalence of tapeworms in cats (P < 0.05).
There were no significant long-term trends in any of the other time series. The smoothed
data were analyzed for seasonal trends. None of the autocorrelation analyses gave
incontrovertible evidence of seasonality. The repeated peaks at the 6, 12 and 24 month
lags in the case of ascarid infections were suggestive of a 12 month seasonality with
a peak prevalence in December, but the results were not statistically significant
at the 5% level. Hookworms and whipworms in dogs occurred together more than would
be expected by chance in 4 out of the 6 years for which data were available.