Can people get heartworm disease from a mosquito bite?
answer Yes, it is possible. Fortunately, people are not natural hosts for heartworms. However, there have been cases in which the larvae migrate to the person’s heart and lung arteries. In these cases, the larvae died before they matured into adult worms and the person’s body produced “scar tissue” around the worm. This can look like a spot on the lungs on an X-ray. According to medical reports, most people (over 50 percent) infected with a heartworm or two never had symptoms, but some people (33 percent) had chest pains, some (20 percent) had a cough, and fewer (15 percent) had a fever. About 1 percent experienced spitting up blood or difficulty breathing. Most people that are diagnosed with heartworms are “smokers.” When the physician sees the white spot (called a “coin lesion”) on the chest X-ray, they are also concerned that it might be primary lung cancer. Additional testing or even surgery (to remove the suspect spots) may occur. It is after surgical removal and microscopic evalu
