Lyme awareness month (May) is coming to a close. Public awareness is creeping forward. The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation and many other groups are all spreading the word. The media is even taking a more prominent role. Last weekend the CTV W5 show from Nov. 2009 was screened again, just in time for Victoria Day weekend and to kick off the worst of the lyme season.
With the increase in public awareness comes an urgent need for better testing, more appropriate and timely treatment regimens, better informed and committed medical professionals, improved protection of our blood supply and better funded quality research. This may seem like a lot to bite off, but we need to make up for lost time. Progress has been very slow over the past few decades as the lyme threat has increased almost exponentially.
In spite of the lack of major sponsors and active researchers, important studies have taken place. Just recently, Jim Wilson of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation sent out a paper entitled “Detection of Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, including three novel genotypes in ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) collected from songbirds (Passeriformes) across Canada.” It is being published in the June 2010 publication of the Journal of Vector Ecology. Its authors are John D. Scott, Min-Kuang Lee, Keerthi Fernando, Lance A. Durden, Danielle R. Jorgensen, Sunny Mak, and Muhammad G. Morshed. John Scott is a well-known name to me, as he has been instrumental with the Lyme Disease Association of Ontario and has also been involved in important Canadian lyme disease vector research over the past number of years.
In brief, the research results bring into focus a major source of the lyme disease infections within Canada. Songbirds are beloved by many, but Scott and co-researchers found that 11.4% of the 366 ticks found on 151 songbirds from 16 different regions of Canada carried the Borrelia burgdorferi (lyme disease) bacteria. The paper is 16 pages long, and can be provided if any reader is interested (just leave a comment below). But it all boils down to the statement at the end of the paper abstract:
Because songbirds disperse millions of infected ticks across Canada, people and domestic animals contract Lyme disease outside of the known and expected range (Journal of Vector Ecology 35 (1): 124-139. 2010)
In other words, forget about the “conventional” wisdom that ticks carrying lyme disease are safely tucked away into discrete endemic areas in a few regions across the country. Yes they are much denser in some areas. But the truth is you can get it anywhere. They even found ticks on songbirds in the Yukon (north of 60 degrees latitude)!
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