Lyme Disease Vaccine.....

[BatterseaBrindl]

Discuss!!!

[Houndtime]

We started giving the lyme vaccine when we began camping with the dogs. We were in several states and in the woods, especially in Gettysburg. The vets we use thought it would be a good idea.

[Guest FozzyBear]

Fozzy's gotten it. He had lyme once and the vet said it made him more susceptible to getting it again, so we vaccinated him. He didn't have any problems

[MaryJane]

I'm planning on giving it this year and my dogs have it the past two years with no problems so far. I live in Mass and some of my property is very wooded with a stream (that deer also visit) and because of that ... many ticks in one part of the yard and wouldn't you know it -- that's where the dogs love to go and sniff. From talking to my vet, they are seeing huge increases in Lyme cases over the past few years.

 

One of my reasons for getting the vaccine was that I'm not a big fan of flea/tick control repellants and one of my dogs has seizures which is making me less of a fan of them. Even if you use repellants, they still allow the tick to bite and be on the dog for about 24 hours or so allowing possible transmission of Lyme. Lyme can be very difficult to diagnose and can fall through the cracks unless you know what you are looking for and dogs can't tell you all their symptoms. My philosophy now is that I'd rather try and prevent Lyme rather than try and treat it later.

[Hubcitypam]

I think in my case what the chances were would factor into what I'd do..

 

Luckily in my part of old Dallas, we have very very few ticks (amazing, and my vet said no one in my part of town that he has treated has had tick problems). but go 15 miles north or east and they are rampant. I usually only use Advantage but when we used to go to Kansas I'd Frontline everyone mostly for a potty break in OK, one of the tick capitals of the world.

 

In our life the risks outweigh the odds of them catching it...and there are reactions in some dogs.

 

I'd have a different mindset if I was in the Northeastern U.S. and camped, hiked or my house backed up to woods. A friend of mine there is going thru treatment for Lyme herself and it's not fun.

Have no idea how common ticks are in Canada and/or where you live but that is something to think about.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Hubcitypam

[Batmom]

If you live in an endemic or expansion area, I'd get it. Decent map here: http://www.lymeinfo.ca/pet-ticks.aspx

[Feisty49]

I adopted Annie Bella in July and didn't discuss it with the vet at the time. I will in April at her next well visit, because I live in a highly infested area of New York State. Actually, I got bit by a tick 2 weeks ago. It was on me from early afternoon, when we went walking into the woods, right into bed that night (yech ) where I finally felt it settling in, so to speak. I was told by two doctors that, at least on people, a tick has to be attached and sucking for 48 hours before being able to transmit Lyme. Nonetheless, both Annie and I at our annual physicals will have a Lyme titer taken as part of our blood work.

[Guest jbbuzby]

YES! At the office where I work, dogs come in ALL the time with positive lyme tests and are very sick! I mean several a month!!! It's worth it to me, at least in the area where I live in where the disease is VERY prominent.

[DunesMom]

My vote? No.

 

Have done it, will not do so again, even though we travel to a heavy Lyme area every summer.

 

ACVIM position paper.

 

See Section 21 & the chart on the next page; most board-certified ACVIM vets recommend AGAINST the vaccine even if you live in an endemic state, for many reasons. One of which is that the vaccine is only between 50% and 90% effective, and only against one strain of the bacteria that causes Lyme.

 

Note that the vets who recommend the vaccine were both in the minority and were all in private practice, and one reason they cited for recommending it was financial.

 

Canine Vector-Borne Disease Organizationpage on treatment and the vaccine.

 

Why I won't do it again:

The research, plus -- Kipper was vaccinated, on Advantage, and still got Lyme. We're fighting it now, second round, and the doxy isn't working like it did last time. Yes, we did a C6 SNAP, at Protatek, for Lyme + the four usual suspects, so we're not seeing antibodies from the vaccine (and besides, he's anorexic and limping with joint swelling in three legs, though no PLN, thank gods).

 

You might say, well, even if it's only 50%-90% effective against one strain, it can't hurt...except it can. Read the ACVIM paper. Not to mention that the vaccine + vet visit fee in my city will set you back almost $100, more if they insist on first running titers because the vaccine is useless if your dog has already been exposed.

 

A well-written and footnoted article that explains why I wouldn't use the Lyme vaccine again even if Kip hadn't gotten it.

 

But after all this research, I do now believe in treating dogs with high titers for TBDs, even if they don't show overt clinical symptoms.

[BatterseaBrindl]

Thanks for responding...this is exactly the kind of good discussion I wanted.

 

I have not yet discussed this topic with my vet, but I want to be well informed before I chat with her!

I do not know how much it costs here in Ontario...no doubt it will be twice the price here!

 

We do live in a very rural area ...I walk the dogs daily and a lot of it is in woods and fields.

We saw a HUGE increase in the number of ticks last fall and right into December.

 

I pulled ticks off the dogs, horses and myself... two or three times a week.

 

I have also been told that they need to be feeding for 36-48 hours before they can transmit any sort of disease.

 

Thankfully, none were engorged on myself or the dogs, but I did find some well-attached ones on a couple of the horses.

They, of course, are turned out in a pasture and there is no way to keep ticks from getting on them. That, and their long winter coats, makes finding ticks very difficult.

 

So...Please carry on with the discussion!

[Hubcitypam]

 

Why I won't do it again:

The research, plus -- Kipper was vaccinated, on Advantage, and still got Lyme.

I am so sorry for Kipper...and you. Advantage does nothing for ticks. It only works on fleas.

[Batmom]

Read the ACVIM paper.

 

My glass is even fuller after reading this . I'll continue to vaccinate (and to use Frontline). Thank you!

 

ETA: Sorry to hear that your dog is ill and that vaccination is so absurdly costly in your area. Cheap here.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Batmom

[BauersMom]

We don't vaccinate for Lyme here, mostly for the reasons outlined in the ACVIM paper and by DunesMom.

 

We do annual 4DX Snap tests, treat with Frontline and keep the yard tidy (much like recommended here: http://www.cdc.gov/ticks/avoid/in_the_yard.html). I don't think adding a somewhat-effective vaccine is worth it.

[GeorgeofNE]

I have to point out the article posted is from 2008.

 

I've been getting the vaccine for years. Not only does my family live in a tick-borne disease hot spot (Nantucket), but there has been an outbreak in the town I live in. Two family members have had Lyme disease, and my brother had Babesia.

 

The only topical that REPELS ticks is Advantix, which I cannot use because of my cat (who is all over the dog all day and night).

[Guest Fasave]

Great conversation and thanks for starting this post. My Thunder tested positive for lyme during his annual exam. Even though I live in a high tick area, I was shocked as I use frontline. Thankfully he is not symptomatic but I know of several other cases where pups got very sick in what appeared to be a short amount of time.

 

One of my questions is, aren't vaccinations suppose to provide exposure to the disease so that they are immune to future exposures? If this is true, why would a dog who has had the disease be more susceptible after they have had the disease? Like chicken pox, if you had it as a child, you're not likely to get it again.

 

When Thunder tested positive, my vet recommended running a titer. He treats any titer over 30 with a four week course of doxy. Thunder's came back at 85 but my vet said he has seen titters as high as 400 without symptoms. He then recommendeds a follow up titer every six months. One thing to consider is that doxy is tough on the system. I'm thankful he has continued to eat well but he hasn't had a normal stool in over three weeks even with the probiotics my vet recommended while on the doxy.

 

I've also read that ticks don't like lavender, lemongrass and geranium. I found an oil at a natural pet store that contains these ingredients that you rub into their fur. I will continue with the frontline but figure it doesn't hurt to add another layer. I really don't want to put another dog through long term doxy treatment.

[Batmom]

Not all exposures (by nature or by vaccine) to disease provide longlasting immunity. Alas .

 

Personally, I wouldn't treat an asymptomatic dog.

 

The ACVIM position paper is outdated and based partly (largely?) on debunked junk "science" surrounding the discontinued human vaccines.

[BauersMom]

Could you point us to evidence on improved efficacy for the Lyme vaccine?

[Batmom]

I didn't say anything about improved efficacy, but there is a publicly available article here: http://cdli.asm.org/content/17/5/870.full .

 

Most people's objections to vaccinating seem to be based on cost (can't help there), fear of adverse reactions (mostly old wives' tales, for most dogs), and/or misunderstanding of how vaccines in general work (not enough time to address that today). The ACVIM unfortunately isn't immune from some of those things.

 

I live in a high prevalence area. My current dogs have had no sign of adverse reactions to any vaccines. The one dog I've had in my life that did, had only a localized, easily preventable reaction. So when there is a vaccine that has shown a reasonable degree of efficacy against diseases prevalent in my area and a low incidence of adverse effects, we get it. YMMV. I will say, tho, that if the human vaccine were still available, I'd get it myself, even hating injections as I do. Unfortunately there is no Frontline for people.

 

 

 

 

[MaryJane]

One other thing that is important to note and this concerns the paper that was referenced - is that there is a newer vaccine that has a better rate of preventing infections and it's not sure whether the paper is talking about the older vaccine or the newer one. And, after reading that article and hearing again what Lyme disease can do to a dog, I'm glad I have been getting the vaccines. There are some really good books out there that provide much more detail on Lyme and also explore the reality that many people have had to go on antibiotics for months to be able to get rid of this.

 

Someone asked why you have to be immunized over and over again -- the vaccine gets your dog's body ready to fight the disease by getting cells that are able to mount an effective first defense against it. These cells have a limited life span and eventually the body stops over-producing them because the disease has not shown up to be "fought against". So near the end of the effective time of the vaccine (if there has not been exposure), there are likely less of the fighter cells being produced. This is also a reason that I vaccinate my dogs slighter earlier that the 1 year.

 

Another note that might be important to some is that they are working on a Lyme titer test so that your dog would not have to be immunized until the titer falls lower than a certain level but, my understanding is that the test is still a year or two away.

[DunesMom]

 

Why I won't do it again:

The research, plus -- Kipper was vaccinated, on Advantage, and still got Lyme.

I am so sorry for Kipper...and you. Advantage does nothing for ticks. It only works on fleas.

 

It was the Advantage Plus Flea and Tick, sorry. Should have specified!

 

thanks. Today he's finally responding to the higher dosage--took nearly a week this time.

 

Vet suspects other TBDs in addition, just not the common four around here or Anaplasma (tested for those).

[DunesMom]

Not all exposures (by nature or by vaccine) to disease provide longlasting immunity. Alas .

 

Personally, I wouldn't treat an asymptomatic dog.

 

The ACVIM position paper is outdated and based partly (largely?) on debunked junk "science" surrounding the discontinued human vaccines.

 

If you know of newer studies or papers, I'd love to see them! I looked at our local med library but found nothing newer in the databases. Am also curious about the human vaccine furor -- my understanding was that it was taken off market because it didn't earn a profit, not for efficacy or other issues?

 

My vet called an immunologist she knows and he confirmed that to his knowledge, the efficacy is better with the newer vaccines, but still varies in the 75% to 90% range. He said he wouldn't bother with his dogs, unless he couldn't use tick repellants and vector control (like, dogs that run free in wooded areas or can't tolerate tick repellants).

 

One other thing I learned was that the tick does not need to attach and feed for a number of hours -- a single bite can transmit, meaning that the tick that lands on the dog and bites once, then dies/falls off because of the systemic meds, can still infect. I don't know where I heard that the tick needed to attach for 12 hours or more, but it appears to be false.

 

Thanks!

[Batmom]

Posted one article a couple posts up. If I get a chance I'll poke around a bit but no guarantees, not on this week's exam list .

 

The people vaccine seems to have been little used partly because folks went all "vaccines and autism (or, in this case, Lyme arthritis)" about it. But IIRC, in the studies done at that time, folks who had the vaccine developed less arthritis than the general public.

 

An individual's experience isn't always the norm, alas. Even if something is 98% effective, there's a 2% out there, and it truly stinks to be one of the 2%.

[Guest Fasave]

What I'm hearing around here is half the vets treat regardless of level of exposure, the other half don't unless there are symptoms. I also know of pups who quickly went from appearing completely normal to ending up in icu for days. I guess what i don't know about it is what is the trigger that takes a dog from normal to very sick. Not sure taking the wait and see approach and risking serious illness is a risk I'm comfortable taking. Then again if I re titer in 6 months and get the same results, I' m not sure what I'll decide at that point either. Definitely not easy decisions.

[DunesMom]

Posted one article a couple posts up. If I get a chance I'll poke around a bit but no guarantees, not on this week's exam list .

 

The people vaccine seems to have been little used partly because folks went all "vaccines and autism (or, in this case, Lyme arthritis)" about it. But IIRC, in the studies done at that time, folks who had the vaccine developed less arthritis than the general public.

 

An individual's experience isn't always the norm, alas. Even if something is 98% effective, there's a 2% out there, and it truly stinks to be one of the 2%.

 

Ah -- found this paper at NIH about what happened to the human vaccine.

 

Interesting about the rare genetic susceptibility to develop resistant arthritis after getting the vaccine (NOT apparently caused by the vaccine, but the vaccine triggered an existing potential genetic autoimmune response, it seems), and how this changed the cost-benefit ratio by including pre-testing for this rare genetic susceptibility. Wonder if that's the same with dogs.

 

The overblown media storm scared people, so sales dropped, so they pulled the vaccine from market, even though it was 80% effective and safe for almost everyone.

 

If I lived in New England and the vaccine was available, I might get it. The human vaccine required two boosters and then you were done, unlike the canine, which is annual.

 

The paper linked above sounds good, but it was conducted and published by Schering Plough, who makes the vaccine. My vet and I are pretty critical of pharm-run experiments, though she did recommend the vaccine in the first place, which is why we got it. She's not crazy about the annual boosters but there are no studies that she could find that even looked at efficacy past one year. Imagine that.

 

She doesn't do the AVMA-recommended three-year vaccinations on her own dogs or mine (except required rabies; others we do every 7 based on efficacy studies). She does do them on all other patients, because her clinic owner mandates it.

 

Although I've decided against the canine Lyme vaccine (as we fight Lyme in Kipper), in general I am a proponent of vaccination and think people who believe vaccines cause autism are misled.

 

But, in the late 80s/early 90s, when I was an editor for a clinical veterinary magazine, I read the original studies which proved that over-vaccination was bad for dogs and cats. That research was attacked back then by the pharm companies and veterinary-practice organizations that stood to lose a lot of money if they lost the income from annual vaccines.

 

Working at the magazine, I was in the thick of correspondence about the attacks on the researchers and saw a lot of exposed studies from the pharm industry -- studies that agreed with the researchers they were attacking, but that had either never been published or that had not included those results in what was released. The attacks were brutal -- personal and professional destruction in the name of money.

 

It left me with an overall bad taste in my mouth. Not for vaccines -- I believe in them -- but for pharm-backed studies. And it left me cautious about harm vs benefit and cost-benefit.

 

Because in the end, very very few dogs infected with Lyme will become so sick that they die. Few dogs will even have symptoms after exposure. Most infections are easily cleared with antibiotics. And Lyme can't spread dog-to-dog, like influenza, so it's not needed for overall public health.

 

So if you use tick control and don't live in the high-risk areas on the CDC map, it seems a waste of money at best. I can understand vaccinating if you live in a high-risk area.

 

But for us, even visiting New England every year and now treating Kipper for Lyme contracted while vaccinated, I can't justify the vaccination.

 

Diagnosing and treating the Lyme plus the recurrence cost the same as three years of vaccinations. (Or will be the same when we're done; it's been cheaper so far.)

 

In our case, even when we're in New England, Kipper has never been in a wooded area until this last summer. So I highly doubt that the vaccine prevented anything the first two years, when he was only in our house, treated fenced yard, and on the beach.

 

That said, I don't have a bone to pick with anyone who does vaccinate -- I only want to explain my position, since I'm the lone wolf. Just don't ask me about the rattlesnake vaccine!

 

Edited for typo!

Edited February 19, 2012 by DunesMom

[Batmom]

Re the people vaccine: The genetic susceptibility thing was hypothesized and has not been substantiated even today.

 

Re pharma-run trials: Skepticism is always good. But, who else is going to run the first couple trials for things like this? No one else has the access, bucks, or incentive to do it until some ways down the road. IMHO that is what peer review is *supposed* to be for -- supplying the checks/balances for these types of studies.

 

Curiosity: Whereabouts are you that vaccines/office visits are so costly?