{"id":2155,"date":"2017-05-01T11:16:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2017-05-24T11:18:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T01:18:56","slug":"abstracts-searching-for-lyme-borreliosis-in-australia-results-of-a-canine-sentinel-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2155","title":{"rendered":"Abstracts: Searching for Lyme borreliosis in Australia: results of a canine sentinel study"},"content":{"rendered":"BACKGROUND:\u00a0Lyme borreliosis is a common tick-borne disease of the northern hemisphere that is caused by bacterial spirochaetes of the <i>Borrelia burgdorferi<\/i> (sensu lato) (Bbsl) complex. To date, there has been no convincing evidence for locally-acquired Lyme borreliosis on the Australian continent and there is currently a national debate concerning the nature and distributions of zoonotic tick-transmitted infectious disease in Australia. In studies conducted in Europe and the United States, dogs have been used as sentinels for tick-associated illness in people since they readily contact ticks that may harbour zoonotic pathogens. Applying this principle, we used a combination of serological assays to test dogs living in tick &#8216;hot spots&#8217; and exposed to the Australian paralysis tick, <i>Ixodes holocyclus<\/i>, for evidence of exposure to <i>B. burgdorferi<\/i> (s.l.) antigens and other vector-borne pathogens.\r\n\r\nRESULTS:\u00a0Altogether, 555 dogs from four demographic groups were recruited into this study. One dog had evidence of exposure to <i>Anaplasma spp<\/i>. but no other dog was positive in screening tests. A total of 122 dogs (22.0 per cent) had a kinetic ELISA (KELA) unit value\u2009&gt;\u2009100, and one dog with a high titre (399.9 KELA units) had been vaccinated against <i>B. burgdorferi<\/i> (sensu stricto) before travelling to Australia. Older dogs and those with a history of tick paralysis were significantly more likely to have a KELA unit value\u2009&gt;\u2009100. Line immunoassay analysis revealed moderate-to-weak (equivocal) bands in 27 (4.9 per cent) dogs.\r\n\r\nCONCLUSIONS:\u00a0Except for a single dog presumed to have been exposed to <i>Anaplasma platys<\/i>, infection with <i>Anaplasma spp<\/i>. <i>B. burgdorferi<\/i> (s.l.), <i>Ehrlichia spp<\/i>., and <i>Dirofilaria immitis<\/i>, was not detected in the cohort of Australian dogs evaluated in this study. These results provide further evidence that Lyme borreliosis does not exist in Australia but that cross-reacting antibodies (false positive results) are common and may be caused by the transmission of other tick-associated organisms. The study is from the Vector and Water-Borne Pathogen Research Group and the College of Veterinary Medicine, School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia; Sydney School of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; Pymble Veterinary Clinic, West Pymble, New South Wales, Australia, and the Department of Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses, Bacteriology and Mycology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Irwin%20PJ%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=28285585\">Irwin PJ<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Robertson%20ID%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=28285585\">Robertson ID<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/?term=Westman%20ME%5BAuthor%5D&amp;cauthor=true&amp;cauthor_uid=28285585\">Westman ME<\/a>,\u00a0et al. <a title=\"Parasites &amp; vectors.\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/28285585\"><i>Parasit Vectors<\/i><\/a>\u00a02017; 10(1): 114. doi: 10.1186\/s13071-017-2058-z.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BACKGROUND:\u00a0Lyme borreliosis is a common tick-borne disease of the northern hemisphere that is caused by bacterial spirochaetes of the Borrelia burgdorferi (sensu lato) (Bbsl) complex. To date, there has been no convincing evidence for locally-acquired Lyme borreliosis on the Australian continent and there is currently a national debate concerning the nature and distributions of zoonotic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,1781,55,577],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abstracts","tag-abstracts-2","tag-lyme-borreliosis","tag-research","tag-ticks"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Abstracts","slug":"abstracts","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":237,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":237,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Abstracts","category_nicename":"abstracts","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"BACKGROUND:\u00a0Lyme borreliosis is a common tick-borne disease of the northern hemisphere that is caused by bacterial spirochaetes of the Borrelia burgdorferi (sensu lato) (Bbsl) complex. To date, there has been no convincing evidence for locally-acquired Lyme borreliosis on the Australian continent and there is currently a national debate concerning the nature and distributions of zoonotic tick-transmitted infectious disease in Australia...","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"3":{"name":"Abstracts","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=3"}},"tags_names":{"54":{"name":"abstracts","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=abstracts-2"},"1781":{"name":"Lyme borreliosis","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=lyme-borreliosis"},"55":{"name":"research","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=research"},"577":{"name":"ticks","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=ticks"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2156,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}