Diagnosis And Prevention Of Borreliosis
Borreliosis is a disease that can affect our pets and is easy to prevent. Therefore, it is important to be aware of this tick-borne disease.
How does my pet get infected with borreliosis?
The Borrelia burgdorferi complex comprises 11 spirochete genotypes that infect mammals and birds, and that are transmitted by ticks of the Ixodidae family . This zoonosis not only poses a risk to dogs, but also to humans, which is why it is of great importance for public health.
Ticks are infected by feeding on reservoir animals and spreading them through the salivary glands. The distribution of borreliosis coincides with that of its vector, as there are few indications that can be made for its control based on this distribution.
Symptoms and Diagnosis of Borreliosis
In dogs, this disease usually has few symptoms in 95% of cases and its symptoms are not clearly defined. Thus, symptoms have been described in the joints or even in the kidneys, but these may or may not appear.
Therefore, it is especially important to use diagnostic methods. Direct diagnosis by pCr, cytology or culture can be costly and difficult, so veterinarians often choose to use a blood sample and detect it by serology.
It is worth noting that while we wait for the diagnosis of borreliosis, if we suspect diseases caused by ticks, our veterinarian will certainly perform a treatment against babesiosis using intramuscular dipropionate.
Borreliosis treatment and prevention
It is important to highlight that the use of antibiotics during treatment, such as doxycycline for at least one month, has been shown to resolve the problem of polyarthritis caused by borreliosis within 48 hours, but did not eliminate the infection in 100% of treated dogs.
Regarding prevention, there is no consensus in the scientific community about vaccination, due to the presence of several species of borrelia and that many vaccines do not protect against all of them. Currently, tick control is chosen as a preventive method.
In this way, we ensure that ticks do not act as vectors against humans, so it is vital to control ticks on companion animals to reduce the risks of Lyme disease for humans.
It is important to note that there are dogs at greater risk of suffering from borreliosis than others. We mainly talk about hunting dogs or dogs that live abroad, as they are the ones that most ticks tend to attack.
In these animals it is especially important to avoid ticks, through the various methods and drugs available on the market, in the form of pipettes or collars, for example.
