What Causes Lyme Disease...?

what causes lyme disease




What causes lyme disease...?
 
Learn the signs symptoms of lyme disease which is caused by a tick bite and can be very serious disease.

Treatment is needed very early if you or your dog don't want to have recurrent symptoms that can wax and wane and return years after actually contracting the disease.

The above picture is of a bullsye tick bite rash caused by a tick. It is important to remember that a bullseye tick bite rash doesn't always need to be present to have lyme disease
  • Many people believe that lyme disease is only caused by a deer tick bite. However, we recently discovered a lyme tick bite victim who contracted the disease from a different species of tick.
  • There are also stories of people contacting the disease from the American Dog Tick, Brown Tick and even the Lone Star tick.
  • Having said this the main causes of lyme disease in people, animals and in your canine are due to a bite from the deer tick which is carrying the bacterium Borrelia Burgdorferi.
  • This bacterium is actually carried in the tick's gut with the black legged or Deer Tick a likely suspect, often found in high grassy areas and open fields.
  • It is also claimed that a tick needs to be attached and feeding for between 24-48 hours for it to pass on the disease, however one victim has stated that they had a tick that was only attached and feeding on them for two hours and they still caught the disease.

What Causes Lyme Disease...?


As previously mentioned the main cause of lyme disease is a bite from the deer tick which can happen even very early in the tick life cycle.

The Disease Cycle...
  • It is most likely that you or your canine will get bitten during the summer months from late May to June as this is when the tick nymphs (the early stage in the tick life cycle) are most active.
  • It was recently estimated that in New Jersey as much as 20-45% of deer ticks were infected and able to transmit lyme disease.
  • Ticks are not born with lyme disease, they either catch it during their first or second feed on a host. A common early host for a tick is the white footed moues, but there are many different animals that can carry the disease. Once the tick has fed on a diseased host the tick will catch the disease and will then pass it on during their next feed - either you or your canine.
Prevention rather than Cure...

If you know what causes lyme disease you are much more able to prevent it and prevention is always better  that cure because the first symptoms of lyme disease  can be so similar to flu that it can go unrecognized and not treated.

If you are left untreated and develop chronic symptoms of lyme disease you may have symptoms that disappear for days, weeks, months and even years before they reappear.

As previously mentioned due to the fact that lyme disease cases are highest in summer when people are outside in the sun a good tick repellent is good way of avoiding getting bitten.

A good tick repellent is capable of being 82 - 100% effective at repelling ticks with repellents available that can be applied to clothing and the skin.

Common tick repellents include...
  • Duranin
  • Permethrin
  • Permonone
  • Deet or Diethylmeta-tolumide
  • Muskol.

We would like to say thanks to John Moran for the use of the bullseye tick bite pictures, you can visit his website here.



Go from what causes lyme disease back to free vet advice or back to dog obedience training home-page