In other news, with spring starting earlier and warmer weather lingering deeper into the
fall, the tick season is expanding. Wisconsin is already a hot spot 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 Saban leads the research there, and he joins us now. Thanks for being here, Dr.
Happy to do it. How alarming is it that the tick population is growing in with it, cases of Lyme
disease? Well, I think that it's not going away, and I think that as a disease in our region, I
think we should get pretty comfortable with the idea that it's 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 going to 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 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 to a lot of the transmission risk of Lyme diseases
very, very low or negligible. So we recommend people be very vigilant to that sort of thing
before they once they come back in from a recreational outing. If you do contract Lyme
diseases, 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 and 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 of it?
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 of the
lapse than at that point the symptoms have oftentimes 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 early? Well, there are certainly tests that
we can use. A lot of things in medicine depend on clinical context. And so that starts with
somebody seeking care and bringing up the idea that they may have been outside or may have had
tick bites or may have been exposed to ticks. And then it relies on the part of the health care
provider to recognize that it's in our area. And it has a pretty diverse array of presentations.
So you combine, you know, the right place at the right time kind of risk back to profile with
the person presenting with the right features of the illness. And at that instance, you know,
you take action and 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 and 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
of other serological tests do because it's a strange disease. And we don't really have 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 uses 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 anyway? 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 healthcare 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 or
delayed. So in this region, on the part of patients know that it's out there and on the part of
practitioners know that it's a thing that people can walk into the office with. And if the circumstances
makes 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 Lyme rex vaccine was offered for a while and
then taken off the market. There have been 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. Saban, 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 mask. They told me to get goats and goats or goats wreck things. Pigs are easier
to fence than I think. How many pigs do you have? We have four now, probably piglets in the next
two weeks. You know, we might have as many as another eight or 10. It really depends. They're
small pigs. They're hair pigs called coonies. Cooney coon pigs. They're delicious. They're actually
not raised.