Lyme Disease?

[Ottbaxel]

I know this has probably been discussed many times but it’s hard to find any one post that consolidates the info, or any recent enough post either.

Currently testing my gelding for Lyme disease-should have results in 7-10 days. We are located in New England. I haven’t been necessarily too worried about Lyme (more focused on mechanical issues causing his problems) because he is in a dry lot paddock and I have never once pulled a tick off him since being in my care for the last year and a half-but we do trail ride frequently, and those little guys are easy to miss not to mention I believe Lyme is pretty common in my area. I won’t be shocked if he has it, but I also am not certain it is the cause of his symptoms. I don’t personally know anyone whose horse has had Lyme, and I understand the symptoms can be kind of all over the place so hoping to get more personal experiences from others whose horses have been diagnosed and treated.

What were the symptoms, how were they after treatment, and what area are you living in?

[JB]

symptoms really can be all over the place, from a travelling but obvious lameness, to spookiness, to anxiety/restlessness, to lethargy, to some incoordination, to lack of appetite, to…name it, it possibly is a symptom

For my mare, it was a notched down level of energy. Nobody who didn’t know her well would have thought anything was wrong - not ataxic, not lame, not spooky, just…not quite herself in terms of her normal TB level of energy. Ate well, great weight, all looked fine from the outside.

Her titer came back at 13,000 chronic. I started her on minocycline (the drug of preference for chronic exposure, where doxy seems to work better for acute), and within 2-3 weeks or so, her energy was back.

We’re in north central NC, not exactly Lyme Central, but no shortage of ticks, and Lyme is likely a bigger deal here than many think. My mare had been here for 18 years at that point, and while she did originate from NY, the odds of any infection then suddenly showing up 18 years later are pretty darn slim

[Pepsy]

Hi there,
You mentioned that your horse is in a dry lot. While waiting for Lyme test results, you may want to research Vitamin E and Selenium deficiency to see whether you should test for those.
EPM is also something to look into if you have not already.
Good Luck

[Ottbaxel]

He’s been tested-he actually tested normal range for both E & Selenium. Surprising since my area is apparently known for low vit E!

[Simkie]

Ugh, lyme. I moved my lyme naive horses into New England several years ago, and was treating at least one of them yearly for lyme despite very rarely to never seeing ticks on them. The nymph deer ticks that are most likely to carry lyme are just SO incredibly small. When I’ve found them on myself it’s just been dumb luck…I’m not sure there’s any hope of finding them on a horse

My crew here has been all over the board on symptoms, from immune system weirdness to being weirdly cranky to just NQR-ness.

We use minocycline, although I think we did a few rounds of oxytet on one, and once we were also dealing with a whopping, ugly cellulitis (that infection component) and were using naxcel for that, which also covers lyme. But mino is usually where you start.

At this point, I just vaccinate. I’m so over it. I should’ve done that from the start, but felt I had a really good handle on the tick thing, since I just never saw any. Ah, live and learn. Here’s the data on vaccinating, if you’re curious:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X17308496

(I’ve also had a NQR horse pop with a solid lyme titer, which was a great fit to explain his NQR-ness, but then he perplexingly didn’t improve with treatment. He had a mild EPM titer, but that was the summer o’ EPM, so I treated that, and he very rapidly improved. So if your lyme titer is negative, or your horse doesn’t improve after treatment, EPM is another thing to consider.)

[fivestrideline]

@Simkie

So if your lyme titer is negative, or your horse doesn’t improve after treatment, EPM is another thing to consider.

Yep, EPM and Lyme have such similar symptoms. Vague NQR, lameness that doesn’t make sense given the circumstances, attitude/spookiness, feed pickiness, infections, ulcers, even things as “mild” as not wanting to take contact. Like JB said, if you can describe it, it’s a possible EPM or Lyme symptom .

These days I pull blood for both tests. If I’m doing one, I’ll do the other. Vets vary on their standards of a “positive enough” EPM blood test, but if it’s off the charts… I’ve also had vets treat for EPM based on symptoms just because it’s a possum area and nothing else was working. It’s been effective for several people I know.

[Ottbaxel]

This guy actually did get vaccinated for it! I’m thinking if he does have it and his symptoms are due to lyme, then he’s had it since before I bought him though (when he wouldn’t have been getting vaxxed for it) since his symptoms have been ongoing since I purchased him and they have just worsened.

[Ottbaxel]

Yeah it’s so tricky! My vet said they usually do the spinal tap to test for EPM, so I only tested for Lyme this time. We did some other things as well to hopefully fix his problems (that you know have been ongoing for a bit now), so if Lyme comes back negative AND those other things don’t seem to help, I’ll probably look into EPM further.

[Simkie]

@fivestrideline

I’ve also had vets treat for EPM based on symptoms just because it’s a possum area and nothing else was working. It’s been effective for several people I know.

Yup, this was my guy. He had an “exposure” level titer and the vet really didn’t advise treating…but there was something weird going on with him and the compound ponazuril is just so cheap. Tada, he got better, hooray!

@Ottbaxel do your vets not lyme titer before vaccinating for lyme…? That’s a little weird if not? I don’t think you want to vaccinate on top of active infection. There are reasonably good EPM blood tests in Antech or the UCDavis IFAT–you definitely don’t need to start with a spinal.

[joiedevie99]

@Ottbaxel

My vet said they usually do the spinal tap to test for EPM, so I only tested for Lyme this time.

I would push harder on this. Spinal taps have larger fallen out of favor for EPM as the blood tests have gotten better (although far from perfect).

We run Lyme and EPM on every horse with fall vaccines, and we run both whenever a horse has something weird happening. Such is life with horses in new england.

[Ottbaxel]

I will if the things we just did to try and help his not-quite-rightness don’t work. It’s all so expensive I really need to be careful to do one thing at a time!!

[anonevent]

How often are you vaccinating? If the ticks are dormant in the winter where you live, can you get away with just doing it once each summer?

[Simkie]

I vaccinate every 16 weeks, which is about the duration of effectiveness shown in that study. I think my vet goes twice yearly.

We don’t have a dormant period, really. Which is super sucky The deer tick nymphs that are mostly likely to carry Lyme are most active in the fall/early winter here, though, I think. But that doesn’t mean you can’t pick up Lyme outside of that…I got it myself over the July 4th weekend a few years back. (Exactly zero fun, I definitely feel for our horses.)

[Bogey2]

What are the symptoms? I ask because we have been dealing with Lyme for years in NE and some horses will test positive with no symptoms and vice versa. I have had more of a problem with ehrilichia due to the high fever.
As an aside I test positive for having had Lyme in the past but don’t get the symptoms some people deal with. I was only tested because I had a high fever and picked a tick out of my flesh the day before…and tested negative for having lyme currently so they thought ehrlichia

[Ottbaxel]

Well, the main point is he’s sore through his hind end. Constantly swapping leads despite injections and lots of strength training. Just overall NQR in his hind end. Really difficult to canter-we’ve been through a whole lot of diagnosis so if you suggest it, he’s most likely been looked at for it lol. He’s also really grumpy while tacking up (otherwise very sweet), randomly spooky at times though not severely…but he’s been this way since I bought him last year. He wasn’t this way when I tried him (and yes, he passed the drug test) but that’s just a couple of rides to base the behavioral symptoms off of. So it’s tricky with him!

[Simkie]

I’ve always found ehrlichia a very acute thing–high fever, they’re clearly off feed. Versus Lyme, which is much more insidious (in general?) and makes you wonder…is there something wrong here…? Lyme is sneaky!

No question with ehrlichia that something is wrong! They are sick puppies

[Posting_Trot]

My previous mare (a TB) developed lyme before vets routinely even thought about it being a problem for horses. (I live in western Mass where ticks are very common). That means that it took a while for a vet actually to diagnose her and start treating; once she was started on treatment, though, a lot her symptoms eased within a week.

But, and this was a big but, I think because she was not diagnosed quickly, she had long-term issues, including arthritis-like symptoms, even without her x-rays showing anything particularly notable (I also took her to get a bone scan which showed essentially nothing). She also had multiple re-occurrences whether through re-infections or because the original infection was never really stamped out.

Her symptoms:
classic “shifting lameness”–she’d seem slightly off on one hind leg one week and the following week, it seemed like the other.
intense reactivity to touch including brushing.
back soreness
lethargy
in her two final infections, she also developed lymphangitis in a hind leg.

(Just as an aside, my husband has also had lyme twice, and one of my dogs has had it too).

Good luck.

[anonevent]

Thank you. I’ll ask my vet about that. I’ve had Lyme and one of my dogs has had a more severe case, so I titer my horse twice a year in the hope of catching it early-ish. That disease is 0% fun.

[JB]

@Ottbaxel

the main point is he’s sore through his hind end. Constantly swapping leads despite injections and lots of strength training. Just overall NQR in his hind end

Not knowing his breed/breeding, have you ruled out PSSM1 and even the PSSM2 variants?

PSSM1 is a simple hair test. PSSM2 is only validly diagnosed via muscle biopsy BUT, if a horse is having issues like yours, I would start feeding as if PSSM2. Those horses often behave exactly like you describe, though that doesn’t at all mean those are about P2, could be EPM or some other neuropathy or SI arthritis and who knows what else. The whole hind end soreness can cause his entire body to be sore

I would also critically evaluate the hind feed, which includes xrays. Normal looking outsides can have NPA inside, though usually the outside reflects that if the NPA has gone on long enough to cause issues.

[ladipus]

We live in Pennsylvania-also a hot spot for Lyme …my Tb geld tested positive with a high chronic titer …we treated with 30 days doxycycline and when we re tested it had gone down enough to be considered a successful treatment…his symptoms were also vague -just NQR and dull in general , and he also had an intermittent mild lameness that we really couldn’t put a finger on …one thing also that happened is that he was mildly colicing on/off every couple weeks and we couldn’t figure out why-my vets didn’t find any correlation-however someone I know told me about a horse at her farm that continually colicked and they couldn’t figure it out either …they decided to test it for Lyme and it was positive…so there’s a possibility of anything I suppose.