Prevalence of Dermatophytosis and Efficacy of Topical Antifungal Treatments in Cats

Abstract

Dermatophytosis is one of the most frequent fungal skin diseases of cats, with high cost of treatment, and difficult control measures. Also, the disease has an important public health consequence. In our study, during a period of 2 year, 183 cats with cutaneous lesions were examined using direct microscopic examination and by fungal culture on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA). Out of 183 suspected samples, 94 cultured positive (51.4%) where 76 samples showed colonies of M. canis (80.8%), while 13 showed T. mentagrophytes colonies (13.8%) and only 4 samples (4.3%) yielded mixed infection (M. canis and T. mentagrophytes). One sample (1.1%) was positive for M. gypseum . Randomly, 25 dermatophytes-infected cats were allocated into 5 groups (5 cats each) and they were treated using topical antifungal agents; Terbinafine, Miconazole, Enilconazole, Ketoconazole as well as combined essential oils (EOs) . Results showed that topical treatment were very effective and cats showed clinical improvement of skin lesions in the following order:combined essential oils , Enilconazole, Miconazole, Terbinafine and Ketoconazole. The results proved that local treatment appeared to be effective in most cases .