
Not to drag this out anymore, but....

Many veterinarians feel that Lyme Disease in dogs is so easy to treat that
in an endemic area, they often just give the appropriate antibiotics to dogs
presenting with lameness, swollen joints, +/- fever.

A recent paper (March 1993) has finally established that Lyme disease in dogs
can be reproduced in a controlled experimentaly setting.  This has been
an ellusive matter for researchers, and is one of the fundamental requirements
for many to acknowledge an agent as being causitive of a particular disease.
Up to now, only the vaccine manufacturer has been able to "prove" that
the disease exists.

This paper is noteworthy in two other regards:

1) None of the animals they infected were treated in any way.  The dogs
had episodes of lameness during a 6-8 week period which occurred 2-5
months after exposure.  After this period, none showed any further
clinical signs up to the 17 month observation period of the study.  So
these are proven, clinically sick Lyme patients showing spontaneous
recovery without the benefit of drug treatment. Of course, observations
longer than 17 months will be necessary to be sure the disease doesn't
have the same chronicity that some see in humans.

2)  The addendum to the paper calls into question the techniques used by the
vaccine manufacturer to validate the vaccine.  Of course, they want
the world to use the model they developed in order to test vaccine
efficacy.

Anyway, maybe we will see some independent, scientifically sound evaluations
of this vaccine in the next year or so.
