Cochrane dog owners are encouraged to check their pets for ticks and if found, to carefully remove the potentially Lyme disease-carrying insects and submit them to the province’s tick surveillance program.
The program, highlighted during the month of May as part of Lyme Awareness Month, is part of the government’s ongoing research to account for blacklegged ticks carrying the bacteria ‘Borrelia burgdorferi’ responsible for causing the serious illness known as Lyme disease.
Local Arrowhead Veterinary Clinic collects ticks and submits them — participating in the program for the last five years.
“We collect well in excess of 100 ticks from our practice alone each year…we have had ticks come back that have tested positive for Lyme,” said Dr. Libby Fulton of Arrowhead.
Fulton said they even found a tick in between the toes of a St. Bernard in January — noting the warm winter conditions that led to this early discovery as ‘a first’.
She encourages dog owners who do not feel comfortable removing the insects themselves to bring their dogs into the clinic and staff will provide assistance to remove the ticks carefully — without breaking their heads off or breaking the ticks apart.
The vet also recommends a preventative approach, such as administering a flea and tick pill regularly; consult your local veterinarian for options.
For Jim Wilson, director of CanLyme (the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation) and Janet Sperling, PhD researcher at the University of Alberta, the Lyme debate continues.
Both Wilson and Sperling, who have been battling the medical community’s traditional approach and treatment of Lyme disease for two decades, are in disbelief over the stats presented by the Government of Alberta.
According to the province’s data from their 2014 tick surveillance program, of the 1,376 ticks collected in 2014, 0.7 per cent blacklegged ticks tested positive for the B. burgdorferi bacteria.
“It’s voodoo math they’re using,” scoffed Wilson. “It’s not ethical math.”
Sperling explained that of the 1,376 ticks, only 137 were tested for the bacteria. Of these, the sampling is pared down further to only 81 (as established as being ‘from’ Alberta) and out of this sampling, 9/81 tested positive for the bacteria that causes Lyme.
“No matter how you slice it, 11 per cent of ticks are testing positive for the bacteria that causes Lyme disease,” said Sperling, who is frustrated at the government’s ongoing minimization of Lyme disease and the prevalence of the bacteria-carrying ticks across North America.
Sperling said other species of ticks (not just the ‘Ixodes’ ticks known to spread Lyme) carry other forms of disease-causing bacteria — which the government researchers continue to turn a blind eye to, but which is the crux of her own research on ticks at the U of A.
Her goal is to prove that provincial testing needs to be vastly improved to test for other forms of Borrelia species and strains that can cause disease in humans.
Sufferers of Lyme disease and CLD and supporters of the CanLyme community have met with frustration and exasperation with support and treatment options offered by the traditional medical community.
This includes inadequate, dated testing methods such as the highly criticized Western blot; the failure to acknowledge the existence of CLD; and the reluctance from the medical community to treat Lyme with long-term antibiotics.
Sufferers are hopeful that change is imminent.
Bill C-442, the ‘Federal Framework on Lyme Disease’ received Royal Assent, becoming law, only months ago.
This private member’s bill, introduced by Green Party leader Elizabeth May in 2012, will establish a framework for federal, provincial and territorial health ministers, members of the medical community, and patients’ groups to collaborate on awareness, diagnosis and treatment and research.
“We’ve been fighting this resistance for over two decades and every step of the way they (the medical community, federal and provincial levels of government) continue to find a way to minimize the impact of this,” said Wilson, who contracted Lyme in 1991, but went through years of ineffective treatment before rounds of long-term antibiotic treatment earned him his quality of life back.
Wilson’s two children contracted Lyme in 2001; his daughter was left with a permanent pacemaker but maintains a good quality of life now (following long-term antibiotic treatment) and his son passed away from health complications stemming from his battle with Lyme.
He said CanLyme would fight hard to ensure that patients and their experts (researchers, professionals from the Lyme community) are at the table with medical professionals to collaborate on a better future for Lyme and CLD sufferers.
According to Wilson there were 682 confirmed cases of Lyme disease in Canada in 2013.
The CanLyme community maintains that inadequate testing has left many sufferers of ‘diseases of unknown origins’ to remain misdiagnosed.
The consensus from within the community is that a (possibly large) percentage of the more than two million persons living with such illnesses as chronic fatigue syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis (MS) may, in fact, be living with Lyme disease or CLD (symptoms associated with these illnesses are often very similar to those that Lyme sufferers live with).
The Eagle has interviewed 37-year-old Jimmy Richards of the local Richards bucking stock family in previous stories on Lyme disease.
Richards, who has spent tens of thousands on naturopathic therapies and rounds of antibiotic treatments that have seen him travel as far as Europe for treatment, believes he contracted Lyme in 2006 (initially misdiagnosed with MS); once Lyme turns into CLD it is much more difficult to diagnose.
Sending blood samples to the IGenex Lab in Palo Alto, Calif. revealed a positive test for Lyme disease in 2012.
He continues to battle with chronic mobility impairment issues and muscle weakness.
To learn more about the province’s tick surveillance program and how to safely remove a tick from your pet, visit health.alberta.ca/health-info/lyme-disease.html.
To learn more about CanLyme, visit canlyme.com.
