Dog-walking behaviours affect gastrointestinal parasitism in park-attending dogs.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: In urban parks, dogs, wildlife and humans can be sympatric, introducing the potential for inter- and \nintra-specific transmission of pathogens among hosts. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of \nzoonotic and non-zoonotic gastrointestinal parasites in dogs in Calgary city parks, and assess if dog-walking behaviour, \npark management, history of veterinary care, and dog demographics were associated with parasitism in dogs \nMethods: From June to September 2010, 645 questionnaires were administered to dog owners in nine city parks to \ndetermine behavioural and demographic factors, and corresponding feces from 355 dogs were collected. Dog feces \nwere analyzed for helminth and some protozoan species using a modified sugar flotation technique and microscopic \nexamination, a subsample was analyzed for Giardia spp. and Cryptosporidium spp. using a direct immunofluorescence \nassay. Descriptive and multivariate statistics were conducted to determine associations among behaviours, \ndemographics, and parasite prevalence and infection intensities \nResults: Parasite prevalence was 50.2%. Giardia spp. (24.7%), Cryptosporidium spp. (14.7%), and Cystoisospora spp. \n(16.8%) were the most prevalent parasites. Helminth prevalence was low (4.1%). Presence of Giardia spp. was more \nlikely in intact and young dogs; and infection with any parasite and Giardia spp. intensity were both positively \nassociated with dogs visiting multiple parks coupled with a high frequency of park use and off-leash activity, and with \nbeing intact and young. Cryptosporidium spp. intensity was associated with being intact and young, and having visited \nthe veterinarian within the previous year \nConclusions: Our results indicate a higher overall prevalence of protozoa in dogs than previously found in Calgary. The \nzoonotic potential of some parasites found in park-attending dogs may be of interest for public health. These results \nare relevant for informing park managers, the public health sector, and veterinarians.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".