Exposure to Tick-Borne Pathogens in Cats and Dogs Infested With Ixodes scapularis in Quebec: An 8-Year Surveillance Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cats that spend time outdoors and dogs are particularly at risk of exposure to ticks and the pathogens they transmit. A retrospective study on data collected through passive tick surveillance was conducted to estimate the risk of exposure to tick-borne pathogens in cats and dogs bitten by blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) in the province of Quebec, Canada, from 2010 to 2017. Blacklegged ticks collected from these host animals were tested by PCR forBorrelia burgdorferisensu stricto,Borrelia miyamotoi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, andBabesia microti. A total of 13,733 blacklegged ticks were collected from 12,547 animals. Most ticks were adult females and partially engorged. In total, 1,774 cats were infested with ticks and 22.6 and 2.7% of these animals were bitten by at least one tick infected withB. burgdorferiandA. phagocytophilum, respectively. For the 10,773 tick infested dogs, 18.4% were exposed toB. burgdorferipositive ticks while 1.9% of infested dogs were exposed to ticks infected withA. phagocytophilum. The risk of exposure of both cats and dogs toB. miyamotoiandB. microtiwas lower since only 1.2 and 0.1% of ticks removed were infected with these pathogens, respectively. Traveling outside of the province of Quebec prior to tick collection was significantly associated with exposure to at least one positive tick forB. burgdorferi, A. phagocytophilumandB. microti. Animals exposed toB. burgdorferiorB. miyamotoipositive tick(s) were at higher risk of being concurrently exposed toA. phagocytophilum;higher risk of exposure toB. microtiwas also observed in animals concurrently exposed toB. burgdorferi. The odds of dogs havingB. burgdorferiantibodies were higher when multiple ticks were collected on an animal. The testing and treatment strategies used on dogs bitten by infected ticks were diverse, and misconceptions among veterinarians regarding the treatment of asymptomatic butB. burgdorferi-seropositive dogs were noted. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that cats and dogs throughout Quebec are exposed to blacklegged ticks infected withB. burgdorferiandA. phagocytophilum, and veterinarians across the province need to be aware of this potential threat to the health of pets and their owners.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".