New testing discloses a deadly danger is in Bexar [Chagas in Texas]

I remember VEE! We had to get our horses vaccinated (this was in NM) and they put a V on their necks with gention violet!
BTW what are the symptoms of Chagas in dogs? I had a dog die of something we could not diagnose back in 2001, we thought maybe a tick borne disease (erlichia) but weren’t sure, and another dog I had had similar symptoms so we treated him with doxy, and he got better, but he did develop an enlarged heart and then died the next year of stomach torsion. Is it possible she had Chagas?

The USAF had made a great amount of doses of VEE Vaccine because of the human bio-threat of VEE. Patrick at Frederick, MD., had predicted that it would jump across the border and many USAF physicians and veterinarians spent a large amount of time making the vaccine in horses...and when it came across the border it was the horses that needed the vaccine. The vaccine was released from the USAF into the USDA and that vaccine was what was used in the horses from NM, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The program was successful and the outbreak was contained the summer of 1971. While I was in the USAF I came across all of the paperwork that was generated during the outbreak and when it was learned that it was going to be destroyed I made sure that the Epidemiology teachers at the University of Tennessee got a copy of all of the paperwork for posterity.

Now, Chagas in dogs is very subtle, can show as renal or cardiac disease and one has to be very adept at looking at the blood for the T. cruzi parasite. It doesn't respond to doxycycline...Bets are your dog was Ehrlichia canis all the way...now that disease is another story that the USAF vets were responsible for pushing the data about...The MWD were all being euthanized in SE Asia because of the threat of bringing Tropical Pancytopenia into the US....come to find out it was already endemic in the US and it had gone undiagnosed. It was the USAF vets that proved that phenomenon. So the military quit euthanizing the dogs coming back from SE Asia...just put them on doxy for a couple of months. I saw a pretty good outbreak of TP in working dogs at Fort Campbell in the winter of 1978. It is carried by the Brown dog tick (and many others) here in the US.

Frontline works on the insects nervous system but has no repellent properties. The Triatomid bug would need some repellent properties IMO...so Advantix or Promaris would be the better offering. This is just my opinion...You need something to repel the insect and keep it from biting. Once the bug bites and passes the parasite its too late.These Triatomid bugs are also called “stink bugs”.

Well, it probably was erlichia, (which was what I thought) but we didn’t test for it, just treated the second dog. When I worked for a vet in Midland, we saw it all the time, but by the time my dogs had it we were in East TX and it didn’t come up as a possibility until very late in the game (for the one that died—she died of renal failure). It appears to be more common in dogs than people know.
Thanks for the info on VEE. I was a kid at the time, but I clearly remember them having to vacc the horses, and the purple V on their necks!

Chagas Detailed Fact Sheet

http://www.cdc.gov/chagas/factsheets/detailed.html

How is Chagas disease treated?

There are two approaches to therapy, both of which can be life saving:

antiparasitic treatment, to kill the parasite; and
symptomatic treatment, to manage the symptoms and signs of infection.

Antiparasitic treatment is most effective early in the course of infection but is not limited to cases in the acute phase. In the United States, this type of treatment is available through CDC. Your health care provider can talk with CDC staff about whether and how you should be treated. Most people do not need to be hospitalized during treatment.

Symptomatic treatment may help people who have cardiac or intestinal problems from Chagas disease. For example, pacemakers and medications for irregular heartbeats may be life saving for some patients with chronic cardiac disease.

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