RE: Equine tapeworm test

Wren — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 11:34:03 GMT

Hi there,

I haven't used this test myself, but the general consensus is that it is as reliable as the blood ELISA. We do very little tapeworm testing, except in colics/clinical cases etc. as we have found clients to be fairly resistant to the cost of testing (cf. FWEC) when a tapeworming dose is £6-7. They'll pay for a FWEC, but not a tapeworm blood test. Now obviously the saliva test changes this, but the general feeling from a couple of people designing targeted programmes is that it can have the effect of cutting the vet out of the loop. A big hospital/lab near us have designed their targeted programme to work on FWECs and only dosing for roundworms in the rare cases that it's required, but to give a tapeworm dose across the board in Autumn.

All of which is to say that I don't know, but i doubt I'll be using it much, mostly for the reasons outlined. The tapeworm drugs do not ever seem to have been at risk of resistance problems, unlike pretty much all of the roundwormers, so it's not wholly unreasonable just to administer a yearly dose.