recent seminars on heart disease and leptospirosis

The staff and I were recently at a conference on Leptospirosis.

'Lepto' (as those of us in the biz call it) is a unique organism that is not quite a bacteria, but not a virus. It actually has its own category of 'leptospires'. A couple of interesting points came from the conference;

1. This disease is transmitted to people. You may recall back a few years ago when many of the triathletes participating in a Springfield, IL event became sick with Leptospirosis. The investigators could never conclusively determine how they got infected, but it was the slowest swimmers who were infected, leading the investigators to assume the athletes came in contact in the water of Lake Springfield.
2. In animals, our 'at risk group' includes German Shepherds and Shepherd mixes, hunting dogs, and any dog who drinks out of a puddle of water (like that narrowed it down very much).
3. The presenting speaker (from Kansas State University), of all the cases he had in the past 12 months, none of the 14 dogs were in the 'at risk' group.
4. In this area of central Illinois, raccoons and rats are the main carriers.
5. Many of the clinics in the area have diagnosed 1-2 cases of Lepto per year
6. There are many 'serovars' of Lepto, and there is no cross protection of Lepto (warning - medical speak coming) Gryppotyphosa to Ictohemoragica, so vaccination needs to be done with the appropriate serovars.

So what is the take home lesson here?

If your dog is in the 'at risk' group, you should definitely get him or her vaccinated. If they have not been vaccinated before, a series of 2 vaccines, 3-4 weeks apart is initially, then annual booster.

If your household has someone that is 'immunocompromised', your dog should be vaccinated. Immunocompromised individuals are:

1. on chemotherapy
2. on dialasys
3. blood thinners
4. any antiviral medication

Anyone who wants to be safe.

Next time what was learned at the heart (cardiology) seminar.

interesting CE class

Hello everyone,

I was at a mini conference in Champaign the other day, and the topic was on heat stroke. It is interesting that we finally have summer this week here in central Illinois.! And it showed up with the heat and humidity.

And you would think that later in the summer is when we see patients that may be suffering from heat stroke, but the opposite is true. We see patients early in the summer with this condition. Why?
The body has an amazing ability to deal with heat- us included. The presenter shared that in humans, (who can sweat- dogs do not) in the beginning of the summer, the sweat we produce has 65 ng/ml(nanograms) of sodium. When the temperature gets very warm, and the body's physiology is allowed 12-14 days to acclimate, the human sweat has only 3-4 ng/ml of sodium! Our body starts to learn how to conserve the sodium in our body, yet still create liquid on the skin, which allows us to 'keep our cool'.

Our dogs do similar things, so when we don't allow then that ease in to the transition, is when our dogs can get into trouble.

The thing to do is call the Dr office right away, and then try to get the pet cooled down. Wetting the paws, ears, and mouth can help as you are transporting the dog to the clinic.

The studies have found that permanent damage is related to the temperature the pet is at and how long he/she is at that temperature.

So everyone take it easy in the shade this weekend!