Lyme disease risk from dogs ‘higher than thought’
This is in the UK, it’s potentially higher in the US.
The expected prevalence of infected ticks on dogs is 0.5% or 481 infected ticks per 100,000 dogs.
Lignin-encapsulated (LE) nootkatone, a component of essential oil in grapefruit peels and other sources, has been found to be a good repellent against ticks that transmit Lyme disease.
“We can’t completely rule out the existence of Lyme disease in the South,” she added, “but it appears highly unlikely.”
Here’s the link to the map.
This is an interesting article. Previously known was that Western fence lizards carry a protein that kills B. burgdorferi bacteria (including from ticks that feed on them). In this study, the researchers removed the lizards from a test plot of land and found the tick population dropped 95% compared to a control group.
“When you have an animal like Western fence lizards that ‘support’ such a huge population of ticks, you can’t assume that those juvenile ticks will go to another host if the lizard population drops,” said Robert Lane, a UC Berkeley entomologist who discovered the microbe-killing protein in lizard blood
This is in the UK, it’s potentially higher in the US.
The expected prevalence of infected ticks on dogs is 0.5% or 481 infected ticks per 100,000 dogs.
Warmer winters bring tick-infested springs | StarTribune.com (Minneapolis) http://ow.ly/8EcDQ
Yet the CDC then went on to admit: “Conversely, we find no study supporting that sexual intra-human Borrelia burgdorferi transmission does not occur. Inferential data strongly suggest the possibility of human sexual transfer.”
