In other news, with spring starting
earlier, and warmer weather
lingering deeper into the fall,
the tick season is expanding.
Wisconsin is already a hotspot for
ticks in the U.S., second in the
nation, after some locations on
the East Coast.
And with the deer tick prevalent
across the state, cases of
Lyme disease are also on the
rise, spiking already
this month ahead of last year.
And 2024 marked a
record of nearly 2,500
Lyme disease cases in Wisconsin.
Could that be surpassed this year?
Researchers at Gunderson Medical
Foundation are staying on top of
the disease.
Dr. Eric Sabin leads the research
there and he joins us now.
Thanks for being here, doctor.
Happy to do it.
How alarming is it that the
tick population is growing and with
it cases of Lyme disease?
Well, I think that it's it's
not going away, and I think that
as a disease in our
region, I I think we should get
pretty comfortable with the idea
that it is a threat that will
probably become more common over
time, especially when you figure
in changes to weather and how
often people are outside doing
outdoor recreation.
Seems like a thing that's going to
be with us going into the future.
And so what should people do about
that? I know that you have said
that, you know, prevention is
better than a cure.
So what's the best prevention here?
Generally speaking, be aware that if
you're going outside and you're
gonna be in a place where ticks
might be, real simple
things, wearing long sleeves,
long pants, tucking
your pants into your socks, wearing
bright clothing so you can identify
ticks when they get attached to you
and remove them before they have a
chance to attach to your body, and
getting in the habit of making sure
that you look for ticks that might
be attached to your skin after you
have been out in the woods or out in
a the place that there might be a
lot of ticks.
We know that if you remove these
things from you before they've had a
chance to attach for too long, the
transmission risk of Lyme disease is
very, very low or negligible.
So we recommend people be very
vigilant to that sort of thing once
they come back in from a
recreational outing.
If you do contract Lyme
disease, is there a cure for it?
There are exceptional treatments.
We've been using antibiotics for
a very, very long time.
Yes, people can be cured,
but it's a pretty serious illness in
a lot of folks and certainly has no
limits on its ability to produce
misery in those who get it.
But yes, we can usually treat people
very effectively, especially if
we catch the disease early.
So what are some of the kind of
worst symptoms?
The ones that patients have told me
are the most disturbing are the ones
that involve the joints.
And I've had patients that have
very significant problems with their
mobility and very significant joint
pain going into months, sometimes
almost a year.
And for people who are otherwise
real active or at a real active
phase in their life, it can
significantly disrupt their quality
of life to a major degree.
So, does it matter
if it is diagnosed and treated
early versus later?
The way that the disease operates is
that it produces inflammatory
reactions in the human body that
have a tendency to progress, change,
and worsen over the course of time
if the infection is not treated.
Generally speaking, it's better if
you take care of it sooner rather
than later.
Lots of the cases don't get
recognized until weeks or even
months have elapsed, and at that
point, the symptoms have.
Often times been much more
dramatic but generally speaking it's
a good idea to try to get antibiotic
treatment for people very soon and
you have a tendency not to then
progress into the real serious
joints or cardiac or neurological
complications after that.
How would you know that
you had it?
Well, there are certainly tests that
we can use. A lot of things in
medicine depend on clinical context.
And so it starts
with somebody seeking care and
bringing up the idea that they may
have been outside or may have had
tick bites or may been exposed to
ticks. And then it relies on the
part of the healthcare provider to
recognize that it's in our area and
it has a pretty diverse
array of presentations.
So you combine the right place
at the right time kind of risk
factor profile with the person
presenting with the right features
of the illness.
And at that instance, you know, you
take action.
You can give people treatment.
A lot of times you can prevent
things from getting much worse.
So has research developed good tests
to diagnose Lyme disease?
I'm biased. I think that the testing
can work and can be effective in
some circumstances, but it has a lot
of limits by virtue of how it works.
Most of the present testing is based
on immunological reactions through
a process we call serology.
And there are pros and cons to that.
Those tests have advantages in
that they can show us immunological
reactivity and recognition, but they
also can be very difficult to
interpret. They don't behave, so to
speak, the way that a lot about the
serological tests do because of the
strange disease.
And we don't really have the tests
that I think are colloquial as well
understood as something like a
pregnancy test You know pregnancy
test doesn't leave much doubt about
what the result means The
problem with Lyme disease testing in
current use is is that it's just
simply not that straightforward in
a lot of cases It can be ambiguous
And so in that instance,
if the results are ambiguous,
should a patient ask to be
treated?
I would suggest that any patient
have an individual discussion with
their provider and make some
decision making on what makes
sense for the risk benefit, pros and
cons scenario.
You should always be forthright with
your doctors about what you
think is going on and health care
practitioners should be attentive
and mindful of what patients
might have experienced.
In medical school they told me you
can't diagnose what you don't think
of and a lot of times things that
are not being considered are
diagnoses that can get missed delay.
So in this region,
on the part of patients, know that
it's out there, and on the part of
practitioners, know it's a thing
that people can walk into the office
with.
And if the circumstances make sense
and favor treatment,
go ahead and do it.
Give it a try.
I know that your lab helped develop
the first Lyme disease vaccine for
dogs.
How far are we from a vaccine for
humans?
There have been vaccines for humans.
The original Limerick's vaccine was
offered for a while and then taken
off the market.
There have other attempts at
developing similar vaccines.
There are pros and cons to the
different vaccine strategies being
used, both in animals and in humans.
Our hope and our work is trying
to find a effective,
protective vaccination that can be
used in humans that would function
in more or less the same sort of way
as a vaccine that a person might get
one time or even perhaps once
a season and then provide protection
going into the whole rest of
that year or that season.
Some progress has been made on that
lots of dead ends.
It's a hard area of work.
Well, thank you for doing that work.
Dr. Sabin, thanks for joining us.
I appreciate it. Thank you very
much.
Thank you.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Good luck with that garlic muster.
Yeah, it's a mess.
They told me get goats and goats
are... Goats wreck things.
Pigs are easier to fence than I
think.
How many pigs do you have?
We have four now uh...
Probably piglets in the next two
weeks uh...
You know uh...
We might have as many as another
eight or ten it really depends
they're sure the small pig there
hairpigs called coonies uh...
Cooney cooney pigs uh...
They're delicious they're actually
not raised