A Retrospective Cohort Study of Tick Paralysis in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Tick paralysis is a frequently overlooked severe disease characterized by bilateral ascending flaccid paralysis caused by a neurotoxin produced by feeding ticks. We aimed to characterize suspected tick paralysis cases documented at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) in British Columbia (BC) from 1993 to 2016 and reviewed prevention, diagnosis, and treatment considerations. METHODS: Demographic, geographic, and clinical data from test requisition forms for ticks submitted to the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory (PHL) from patients across BC between 1993 and 2016 for suspected human and animal tick paralysis were reviewed. Descriptive statistics were generated to characterize tick paralysis cases in BC, including tick species implicated, seasonality of disease, and regional differences. RESULTS: From 1993 to 2016, there were 56 cases of suspected tick paralysis with at least one tick specimen submitted for testing at the BCCDC PHL. Humans and animals were involved in 43% and 57% of cases, respectively. The majority of cases involved a Dermacentor andersoni tick (48 cases or 86%) and occurred between the months of April and June (49 cases or 88%). Among known locations of tick acquisition, the Interior region of BC was disproportionately affected, with 25 cases (69%) of tick bites occurring in that area. CONCLUSIONS: Tick paralysis is a rare condition in BC. The region of highest risk is the Interior, particularly during the spring and summer months. Increasing awareness of tick paralysis among healthcare workers and the general public is paramount to preventing morbidity and mortality from this rare disease.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".