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MU researchers study tick-borne feline disease
DVM NEWSMAGAZINEApr 20, 2009
Columbia, Mo.Researchers at the University of Missouri are studying a tick-borne disease that kills housecats within three to five days after the onset of illness.
The incidence of Cytauxzoonosis, caused by the protozoan parasite Cytauxzoan felis, in domestic cats is not known, but researchers are trying to determine those numbers and eventually find a preventive. Leah Cohn, a professor and associate department chair of veterinary medicine and surgery at the school, is the lead researcher.
During the 12-day incubation period a cat may exhibit no symptoms, but then show a pale to white gum line, lethargy, jaundice, fever and then die within three to five days.
The native bobcat is known to be the original host of the organism, which then is picked up by ticks and spread to domestic cats. The disease originally was believed to exist only in parts of Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, but recently has been reported throughout the Southeast and as far northeast as Pennsylvania, researchers say.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture supported early research into the disease several years ago when it was believed the disease threatened livestock, but dropped funding when it learned only cats were affected. Cohn resumed the research three years ago, and this year received study grants from the ALSAM Foundation and WINN Feline Foundation.
A definitive diagnosis of Cytauxzoonosis is difficult because of the quick death of cats and because many owners elect to euthanize cats with the life-threatening symptoms without paying for further investigation, veterinarians say.
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Living with Lyme disease
Ashley Gardner
Texarkana Gazette
Texarkana TX/AR
January 14, 2007
Phylis Chandler Hancock's first symptoms of a mysterious illness began about seven years prior to her discovering the source of her sickness.
Fatigue, loss of balance and blurry vision were problems she dealt with in intervals for the better part of a decade.
"The first time it happened, I was taking care of my mother before she died. I got up out of a chair one day and fell in the floor. I thought maybe I was tired because my mother was in bad health but I kept losing my balance. As long as I was holding onto something, I was OK but when I would let go, I would fall back to the floor," Hancock said about her first symptoms. After a while, Hancock's symptoms faded into the background and she kept living life.
In the next few months, she went through some major life changes, including losing her ailing mother and beginning a new job.
Over time, the "spells" continued to pop up.
"I had spells where my vision would get blurry and things were not clear or sharp. I would have these periodically. Sometimes I would feel better in a day or two, sometimes a week or longer," Hancock said.
Hancock saw doctors on and off for the mystery illness as well as pneumonia and a neck spur.
"One doctor ran me through a bunch of tests but nothing came back," Hancock said.
She explained away her fatigue and joint pain by attributing it to her job as a cake decorator at Wal-Mart in Nashville, Ark., where she had to stand on her feet for hours on end.
But last July, her condition worsened and a desperate hunt for answers began.
"She was having mild seizures and just blacking out. She had chronic fatigue. No matter how much she slept, she was still tired. Just taking a bath was an effort," said Hancock's daughter, Rebecca Heaston. "She went from someone who lived by herself and worked every day to having to have someone with her all the time.
"In July, she started having seizures again and by the end of August, they were really bad. She went from one spell here and there to one seizure a week. She hasn't worked since July," Heaston said.
Heaston accompanied her mother to one doctor's office after another.
Hancock's family doctor, emergency rooms doctors and a neurologist couldn't conclusively figure out what was wrong with her.
"We were constantly going from one doctor to another to another and none of them could figure out what was wrong," Heaston said. "The hardest part was two of the doctors told her it was her nerves. She's not a nervous person or depressed person. They put her on nerve medication but it did no good. She just got worse."
Hancock doesn't remember much about recent months but she couldn't forget the sense of hopelessness she felt throughout the time her illness was misdiagnosed.
"I knew there was something bad wrong and I couldn't get anybody to help me," Hancock said. "I told the doctors `I don't care what you call it. I don't care what it is. I don't care if you put me in the loony bin, just fix it.'"
Toward the end of November, Hancock was scheduled to see a neurologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' neurology clinic on Dec. 21 but as luck would have it, she didn't have to wait that long for answers.
"My mother-in-law ... had seen her neurologist in Fort Worth. Her doctor said if we could be there by 11 a.m. the next day, he would see my mom. I packed both of our suitcases and within an hour, we left Murfreesboro headed to Fort Worth," Heaston said.
Within three days of seeing the doctor in Fort Worth, Hancock's mysterious illness was confirmed to be Lyme Disease, an illness passed to humans by the bite of infected, black-legged ticks.
When caught in the beginning stages, Lyme Disease is usually easily cured with a round of antibiotics but if it's not caught early, the effects can be devastating and infection can spread to the joints, heart and the nervous system.
In an unlikely coincidence, Heaston's mother-in-law had also suffered from Lyme Disease and had also been misdiagnosed for years.
"She was originally diagnosed as having MS (multiple sclerosis). She was treated for three or four years with MS but they never found lesions on her brain. She went to another neurologist who said she didn't have MS, she had lupus," Heaston said of her mother-in-law's struggle to get to the bottom of her illness.
Hancock is thankful to know what illness she is up against.
"Not knowing was the hardest part. It was like a miracle when somebody finally told me what it was, but there was still that voice inside saying, `maybe that's it, maybe not.' You just hope and pray the doctor knows what he's doing and after I took my medication for a couple of weeks, I started feeling better. I could finally do a few things for myself," Hancock said.
But her road to recovery is far from over.
"With my immune system as weak as it was, I couldn't take the amount of medication I need so my doctor has had to slowly build me up," Hancock said about the painful process of overcoming late-stage Lyme Disease.
Hancock wanted a chance to tell her story to make the public more aware of the symptoms of Lyme Disease in hopes others will be able to avoid going through what she endured.
"I don't want anybody to end up like this if it can be prevented at all. The thing I think about the most is little kids who may go through this. We're in an area that thinks nothing of tick bites. We take them off and go on," said Hancock, who remembers having a tick on her back before her mother died.
She didn't see the bullseye rash, which accompanies Lyme Disease about 80 percent of the time.
Lyme Disease can take a long time to present itself in an infected person.
"It can be months to years following infection before people have symptoms of later-stage Lyme Disease," said Hannah Gould, an epidemic intelligence officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colo. "It's been shown that people don't have residual bacteria remaining following treatment though it does sometimes take awhile for symptoms to resolve ... but they usually do go away."
Courtesy: www.lymeinfo.net
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© 2006 The National Lyme Disease Memorial Park Project
