Foxes in the city - parasitologist to the fox tapeworm: consider danger to be very low

Foxes in the city - parasitologist to the fox tapeworm: consider danger to be very low

foxes in the city - parasitologist to the fox tapeworm: "consider danger to be very low"

Ex-RKI boss Lothar Wieler recently warned of foxes in the city-they could transmit serious diseases. A parasitologist now describes the real danger for Berliner.

"Eat no berries under knee height, maybe the fox was on it!" Grandma already knew that the fox tapeworm could be dangerous. And the former head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, warned of Foxes and their excretions on the weekend. In fact, the fox tapeworm is one of the few parasites in Germany that can cause serious illnesses in humans - alveolar echinococcosis.

"I think the danger from the fox tapeworm is very low," says parasitologist Prof. Emanuel Heitlinger from HU Berlin on Monday RBB | 24. In his own study, he and his working group could not demonstrate the fox tapeworm in any of 100 foxes. Heitlinger advocates pragmatic handling of the large Fuchs population in the capital.

"In view of certain precautionary measures, it is possible to enable relatively close coexistence of humans and wild animals with little risk," says Heitlinger. "For the mutual well -being, people should not press wild animals or attract by deliberate feeding. One should adhere to the common hygiene standards when dealing with the excretions or carcasses of wild animals: gloves and ideally mask." An encounter with wild animals such as the fox in the city can remain a "joy".

"The spread of the foxes in cities is basically not a good development," veterinary doctor Lothar Wieler told the newspapers of the Funke media group. There is the living environment of the wild animals and the world of people, said Wieler and added: "To avoid infections, we should mix these worlds as little as possible." Whoever feeds foxes or other wild animals or admits that they find food near settlements, increased the chance of risky contacts, said Wieler. "That should be omitted. Foxes should go back where they belong," he emphasized.

The fox tapeworm (E. Multilocularis) is a parasitic tapeworm that mainly occurs in foxes, but also in other wild animals. In Europe, it is particularly widespread in southern Germany, northern Switzerland, West-Austria and East France. It is only a few millimeters tall and lives in the intestine of predators such as foxes, cats or dogs. These separate his eggs with the feces - they can then be absorbed by rodents like mice. If the rodents are eaten by predators, the circle closes: the larvae in the intestine in turn develop into ripe tapeworms.

People can infect themselves by contacting the feces of infected animals or by eating contaminated fruit, vegetables or water. Between infection and the first symptoms, people can pass for months, years or even decades. The larvae usually get into the liver or lungs, in rare cases they also affect the brain or the bones. However, a transfer to humans is very rare. According to a report by the "European Center for Disease Prevention and Control", there are around 50 - 70 cases in Germany in which the fox tapeworm merges into humans. So far, the fox tapeworm has so far only been rarely proven. By 2012, the Landeslabor Berlin-Brandenburg carried out a monitoring, in which a four-digit number of foxes were examined-an infection could not be determined in Berlin. The studies in Berlin have been sporadically have been running since 2012 - also without positive findings.

broadcast: RBB24-Inforadio, 24.07.2023, 16:20