Stop Burning Your Ticks! A Parasitologist Debunks Dangerous Pet Myths | SOP Ep. 121 – Dr. Lindsay Starkey

 

Are you still using the “lit match” trick to remove ticks? If so, you could be doing more harm than good.

In this episode, we sit down with renowned veterinary parasitologist Dr. Lindsay Starkey to debunk the dangerous myths surrounding parasite control that are putting your pets at risk. From why “winter breaks” from preventatives are a dangerous gamble to the terrifying resurgence of the New World Screwworm, Dr. Starkey provides the science-backed insights every pet parent needs to hear.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The Golden Rule of Tick Removal: Why you should ditch the matches and alcohol, and why saving that tick in your freezer is the best way to help your veterinarian.
• The Winter Myth: Why ticks, fleas, and heartworm risks don’t disappear just because the weather gets cold—and why year-round prevention is mandatory.
• The Screwworm Reality: Understanding the return of the New World Screwworm, a parasite that feeds on living tissue, and how to protect your animals.
• Alpha-gal Syndrome: What you need to know about the meat allergy linked to Lone Star ticks.
• Heartworm Treatment: Why the preventative is much safer and easier than the alternative.

Don’t wait for your pet to show symptoms. Listen in to get the facts straight and keep your furry friends safe year-round!

 

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All footage is owned by SLA Video Productions.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the Podcast here

Stop Burning Your Ticks! A Parasitologist Debunks Dangerous Pet Myths – Dr. Lindsay Starkey

Correcting Myths About Ticks And Heartworm

Welcome to the show. Janet, you know the whole reason we started this show was to correct myths and misinformation that pet parents may be reading elsewhere, which ultimately could harm their pet. The number one area, in my opinion, where they are not getting their facts straight is ticks, heartworm, and fleas. We’re even going to talk about screwworms. If you guys don’t know what it is, you need to know what it is. I am so fortunate that Dr. Lindsay Starkey, parasitologist, took the time to join us.

Dr. Starkey got her vet and PhD degree from Oklahoma State University, where she is an Associate Professor. She won the Distinguished Teacher Award twice. She’s a Diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Microbiologists with a sub-specialty in Parasitology. She’s not only a teacher, a lecturer, and a researcher, but whenever she hosts a webinar, as a veterinarian, I tune in because I want to keep up on everything that’s going on with tick disease. As our audience knows, Janet had Lyme disease. She’s in Darien, Connecticut.

I’m a Lyme and Bartonella survivor.

That’s right.

Welcome, Dr. Starkey. We appreciate your giving your time for all this.

Thank you both for having me. I’m so excited to talk through this.

I’m going to start because I want to face some of the questions people have been emailing us. First of all, what do I do if I find a tick on my pet?

 

 

Proper Tick Removal Techniques And Avoiding Harmful Myths

The best thing you can do is get it removed as quickly as possible, but removal can be a little tricky. When I was a kid, I used my fingers and pulled them off of myself, or the barn cats, or the dog. That’s not the best way. The best way is to get a pair of tweezers or something fine, grip it as close to the skin as you can, and slowly and steadily pull it back. You don’t need to do any twisting or odd manipulations. Slow, steady pressure can remove that tick. It is cemented in. They secrete cementum. I was teaching my six-year-old about this. Apparently, he taught one of his six-year-old friends at kindergarten and called it concrete. I was like, “Well.”

That’s close, though. I’ve seen myths about putting a lit cigarette on it, pouring oil on it, or putting alcohol on it. Tell us why not to do that.

The cigarette would start a fire.

Don’t do alcohol and then flame. That’s a bad combination. All of those things are irritating. They would be irritating to us if someone put them in our faces. As a tick, which is concreted into the host, they don’t have anywhere to go when they get irritated. They’re connected by a straw that connects our bodies to their bodies. All they can do, if we squeeze on them too hard or bug them by putting irritants on them, is that they’re likely to regurgitate. That’s exactly how they transmit things like the Lyme spirochetes, Ehrlichia bacteria, or viruses into us to begin with. We don’t want to facilitate that.

I never thought about that.

I am anti-spirochete. They wreak havoc in your body once they’re in there.

If I take the tick off, what should I do with it?

Storing And Testing Ticks For Better Veterinary Care

My favorite thing to do is to put them in a little Ziploc baggie, put them in the freezer, and startle my husband when he goes to open the freezer to pull food out. Save it. We routinely have random things in the freezer at my house, but that’s a side effect of my job. Save it because that can be a valuable tool to your physician if it’s off of you or to your veterinarian if it’s off of your pet.

Different ticks carry different things. They transmit different things. We can test the tick specifically to see if it’s carrying something. Someone can look at the tick, identify it, and make an educated guess as to the diseases that might be playing a role. It helps us monitor tick expansion because we have new ticks in this country expanding. We have new things, in general, entering this country. I can’t wait to talk a little bit about screwworms, too. It’s important to keep track of that.

Different ticks carry different diseases. Testing the tick can reveal what it may have transmitted. Share on X

Save it in a Ziploc baggie in the freezer or on your counter. It’ll live for a while. You can put it in alcohol if you have rubbing alcohol at your house. Make sure to put the date on it and who or what it came from, so that you can track that, because you may have more than one tick over the course of a few days that creeps its way into your life.

Our readers need to contact their town or city because, where I live, they tell you to put it on a piece of white tissue or a cotton ball, put it in a Ziploc, write on it, and then take it to our health department right here in town. They send it out for testing, and then they send you a letter that says positive or negative. Since I live in Connecticut, Lyme, Connecticut, is where it was founded. They track the address and everything. It’s cool. It’s very rewarding when it comes back negative. They’re tracking them pretty much everywhere because it is such an issue.

Different states have different funded programs, and even different universities. We have a project here called Show Us Your Ticks. It was started years ago by my mentor, and it’s still ongoing. It is pulled off of dogs or cats by the veterinarian and submitted through the veterinary clinic. There are online outlets for pet owners or individuals to get their ticks identified remotely via pictures. The ticking counter website is good. State health departments or different institutions may have their own programs to assist in human or animal tick identification and testing.

Do only deer ticks carry Lyme disease and other diseases?

To your first question, yes. To your second question, no. The deer tick is the Ixodes genus of ticks in this country. They are the ones capable of transmitting the Lyme spirochetes. It’s different if you get outside of the United States. There’s a little more variety of the spirochetes that cause Lyme and potential vectors in different parts of the world.

In the States, it’s Ixodes scapularis, the deer tick. All the other ticks transmit a bunch of other stuff. Ixodes can transmit a bunch of other stuff, too. It can transmit anaplasmosis or babesiosis to people. Some of our severe tick-borne diseases are ehrlichiosis in dogs or cytauxzoonosis in cats, as well as Lyme disease in dogs. Any tick is potentially a dangerous tick.

My neighbor called me because her dog was limping, even though I’m a dermatologist. She mentioned to me that her husband had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I’m in South of Cleveland, Ohio. Another piece of misinformation besides Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is only in the Rocky Mountain area.

No. They tested me for it.

Please talk about that. Also, what about people who rush their dog up to the vet because they took a tick off their dog and want antibiotics? I’d love your opinion on those two things, the Rocky Mountain and the, “Put my dog on antibiotics because I found a tick on him.”

Understanding Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever And Disease Vectors

The Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is a misnomer now that we’ve done a lot more exploration. Back in the day, when that disease was first discovered, like Lyme disease discovered in Lyme, Connecticut, they were looking at dermis-centered ticks in the Rocky Mountain areas. We know dermis-centered ticks are all over the place. They’re the primary vector for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but not the exclusive one. We see more Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever cases more through the mid-Central or Southeastern United States, but it can be anywhere because dermis centers truly are everywhere.

What about taking the dog to the vet to get antibiotics? That’s a misnomer, isn’t it?

Taking the dog or the cat to the vet is the best thing you can do if you’re concerned as a pet owner. However, we need to be a little cautious on the antibiotic stewardship trail. We’re having to have more conversations about that. Depending on where you are geographically, for me here, maybe 2% to 3% of the ticks are carrying the Ehrlichia bacteria, which is the most common disease in my neck of the woods in Oklahoma. In parts of New England or the Great Lakes regions, I saw a talk where over 50% of the Ixodes were carrying Lyme Spirochetes. It depends. Is it a 50/50 shot?

That’s why saving the tick is so important. You can test the tick. That can drive our monitoring, our diagnostics, and maybe our treatment conversations a little more pointedly than guessing. Antibiotics are only good if there are truly bacteria there. Otherwise, we mess up the microbiome, we can cause diarrhea, or we can cause resistant skin bacteria. We need to be a little cautious with antibiotics rather than throwing them in at everything, but they’re the right thing to do in some situations.

How long does that tick have to be in there with that cement to transmit? They come out engorged. Sometimes, they’re not when I pull them out.

It depends on what pathogen you want to talk about. If you want to talk about Lyme, we typically say at least 24 hours. The longer the ticks attach, the more likely that a transmission event can occur. With things like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, though, there has been a study where they showed 30 minutes of tick attack was enough. It’s all over the place. Viruses seem to transmit very quickly.

Some of our bacteria are a little slower, but half a day to a day and a half is that scary range. Protozoal organisms, so for humans, Babesia is the big one of concern in this country. With animals, we talk about Cytauxzoon and Babesia. Those are more than half and beyond. The protozoal organisms are what those categorize as they’re a little slower.

The nymphs are itsy bitsy tiny like the spider.

They look like little spiders. People will take a picture, send it to me, and say, “Is this a spider, or is this a tick?” Go on, Janet.

They’re tiny. I felt something funny on my hand, and I looked, and I was like, “Oh my God.” It was one of those. Do they transmit at that young age?

They can. If we want to simplify it, our ticks have three life stages. There’s the baby version or the larva. That’s the first one that comes out of that tick’s egg into the environment. Then there’s the nymphs. That’s the one you’re referencing. They are the size of a poppy seed to a chia seed. They’re still small when they’re flat. That’s the teenager version. Then, you have your male and female adults. There are pathogens like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and some of our Babesia species, where the ticks can be born already infected if the mother tick was infected. She passes that on into the eggs so those larvae can immediately transmit it to the first thing they feed on.

For the nymphal stages, they’ve already fed once in their life. If they feed on something that was infected, and they’re capable of carrying that pathogen on, they can transmit it as that teenager or nymph version. For nymphs, it’s fair game. Any pathogen that a tick is capable of transmitting, a nymph could be carrying it. It’s the same with the adults. For the larvae, there may be a better chance you’re not going to contract anything, but that’s still not a risk-free tick-feeding event.

Deers, we know carry ticks. What other animals in our neighborhoods carry them?

Everything. I saw a picture of a turtle. It was in Oklahoma, but throughout the Southern United States. This tick can become the size of a golf ball when she is fully fed. It was the most enormous tick I’ve ever seen in my life.

I love turtles.

It was dangling off the turtle’s skin. You think about snakes and turtles. They’re semi-aquatic, so you’re thinking they won’t have it. Anything that has legs, or even not legs when we’re talking about snakes, can harbor different tick species. Some ticks have preferences. Some are very generalists.

 

I have a question. We go to Florida for half the year. We take the girls or the dogs, the two Goldens. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was reading that there are not as many ticks there because of the little lizards or anoles. What’s the story with that?

We have way more ticks here in Oklahoma than we did when I lived in Auburn. I was raised in Kansas. I went to Arkansas for a few years for school, lived in Oklahoma for nine years, and then took a faculty position down in Alabama. We had way more ticks when I was doing my grad school in Oklahoma than I ever encountered in Alabama. You think further South has more ticks. That’s the Florida story. Honestly, South Texas, too. Those climates are different. Soils are different. The predators are different. Even mosquitoes don’t seem to do that well in Florida, but I think part of that’s community-wide mosquito abatement efforts.

You look at the maps of these different vectors, and Florida is oddly light, if you will, for some of them. It is the same with South Texas. There’s something going on there. The fire ants might be playing a role from a predatory aspect. There may be some other predators. Maybe the anoles are snacking. The anoles are bad from a non-vector-borne parasite perspective. Cats love to eat them. Cats get too full from eating them and all sorts of other fun things. I don’t necessarily love the anoles from a parasitic perspective.

Do cats and dogs react differently to Lyme? I had a Golden that had Lyme four times.

Back up. Did the dog have Lyme four times, or did she have antibodies to it that whole time, Dr. Starkey?

I don’t know. They treated her four times with Doxy.

Our diagnostics for some of these pathogens do rely on antibody detection, as your sister mentioned. That’s our immune response. Veterinarians, in general, have to get rabies vaccines when they go through school, and they have to remain boosted because of the risk of rabies associated with our day-to-day work. I had a rabies shot in 2007. That’s when I was a little first-year baby vet student. I have never needed a booster shot. My titer has remained high enough.

1989, and my titer is still 800 times. Go on.

I’m borderline. I’m going to need a booster soon when I get checked. There are veterinary students every year. As I’m talking to the clinical vet students, I ask them, “How many of you needed a booster before you could even come to clinics?” Meaning, their immune system did not react strongly enough for them to even have a detectable titer three years later. It’s incredibly variable, an individual’s immune response. When our diagnostic test relies on that immune response, it’s difficult to interpret.

We do antibody-based testing for things like Lyme, anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and even Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but whether or not that animal is actively infected with that is difficult to tell from that test alone. You have to do additional testing to make sure whether they are sick with Lyme or whether their kidneys are okay. Kidneys are often the second checkpoint for those Lyme-positive dogs on that antibody test. Those are where we start seeing the severity of Lyme set in. It causes arthritis and kidney disease. Those are the things we want to follow up on and check on when that positive antibody test happens.

Janet, was your dog limping?

She was like an old man.

That explains it then.

My son’s had it three times. I had it once. What the doctor also told me is that I will always test positive. They also check your inflammation numbers along with that.

Debunking The Seasonal Prevention Myth

What about the myth of, “I don’t need to keep my dog on flea tick preventative or heartworm preventative in the winter.” Please address that.

My own family members are guilty of this, not only me. It makes sense. We all think of winter as being this colder, incompatible climate for things that like warmth and moisture. My winter is very different from your winter, and then a Florida winter. How many of you in New England are like, “I’m getting the heck out of here in winter, and I’m going South. I’m taking my animals with me.” We cannot allow that misperception of a seasonal approach to think that we’re going to cover our bases.

I remember here in Oklahoma, I was at VMX, which is the largest veterinary conference in the United States, for those that don’t know. It’s in January every year, around Martin Luther King weekend in Florida. It was fine there. I flew home, and it was 70 degrees the day I got home. Within two days, we had eight inches of snow on the ground in Oklahoma. We don’t get a lot of snow here.

You can’t do monthly or even beyond monthly based treatments, like, “It’s January, so I don’t need to give anything,” because there are going to be days in January where those ticks, mosquitoes, or what have you are active. Some ticks live indoors. Fleas like to live in your house. Your house is more climatically controlled than outdoors.

Most of these products that we recommend to put pets on for tick protection also provide intestinal deworming or heartworm protection, too. Those things aren’t nearly as seasonal as what we think about with fleas and ticks. The roundworm eggs and whipworm eggs are in your backyard forever. That risk is constantly there if you have that contaminated environment that your pet sees. They could acquire intestinal parasites routinely year-round.

I read there was an insurance study that said that the majority of pet owners only buy flea, tick, and heartworm prevention for 5 months instead of 12 months. I think that’s crazy. In Ohio, sometimes, we have mild winters. Sometimes, it never gets below 35 degrees. To me, I found mosquitoes in the house in the winter.

Cockroaches in New York City are impermeable. They don’t die anymore. I think ticks are the same, honestly. Since being sick, I don’t ever want to go through that again. It has completely ruined my joints for the rest of my life. It was almost a year that nobody knew what was wrong with me.

When you read about Lyme in humans, the minimum people have seen are 5 to 10 doctors before they’re accurately diagnosed.

Imagine your pet. Libby can’t tell me, “I’m achy today,” or, “I feel fever.” You have to be aware as a pet owner. Do the stuff every month. Put it on your calendar. It’s so easy.

The other thing is, buy it from your veterinarian. People think, “They’re marking it up, and they’re trying to make money.” We stock the up-to-date in-date products. We store it correctly.

Also, they’re authentic.

When you buy it online, you have the chance of it being a counterfeit product. If you remember, a few years ago, someone was selling counterfeit heartworm preventatives. How horrible is that? Buy it from your vet. Put them on it twelve months a year.

I have a question about that. Are collars, oral meds, and topical preventers all equally effective?

That’s a loaded question. If I could put up a chart for you all, comparatively, between all the products that are out there, some only do fleas. Some only do fleas and ticks. Some do as much as they can. By that, I mean we’re talking about intestinal parasites. There’s still variety there on different products and their capabilities, like intestinal parasites with heartworm, flea, or tick, but those products do not repel anything from biting. They don’t have the chemical active ingredient in there for any repellency.

Collars, by and large, are only for ectoparasite control. They’re not going to do any heartworm prevention for you classically against the worm or any intestinal deworming. With orals, as long as the dog or the cat eats it, because there are oral products for cats, too, then it’s in there, and it’s not going anywhere. If you have an actively swimming or bathed animal, a topically applied product might not be the most effective long-term because you might be removing some of that product as you bathe your pet.

You have to be cognizant and maybe even use, if your finances allow and the risk of your pet deems necessary, a combination of those things to provide the most robust protection. I can tell you from my own dogs that I use multiple products at the same time. Fortunately, I’m in a position to be able to do that for my dogs, but I do know a lot of folks are crunched, and they’re having to make important decisions. They need to partner with their veterinarian to have those conversations because it is case-by-case.

I wish I could say, “Everyone should use this,” and let it be simple. Even with the advancements and all the products that are out there, I still can’t say, “This is the blanket. Everyone should be using this thing,” because it’s not that simple. Your veterinarian is the best resource you can have to have a point of conversation about flea, tick, heartworm, and deworming for your pets. If you have any questions, they should be your first stop when having those conversations.

When I go out to garden, or I’m going out for a walk, I spray my clothing with permethrin. I have clothing that’s been soaked and treated with permethrin. I don’t ever apply that to my dog.

You might, depending on what products you’re using.

What’s the other chemical they use? I’m trying to think of it.

DEET is not good for animals.

That’s something I want to make sure of.

Good to know.

With permethrin, I wouldn’t spray the one you spray on your clothes directly on your pet, and definitely not your cat. Permethrin and cats don’t go together. There are permethrin-containing dog products on the market. It’s the same active ingredient, but different formulations. We apply it directly to the dog’s skin, but it’s a monitored volume.

It’s a tightly regulated and tested formulation. If you go to spray on your animal, you won’t know how much is going to get on there. Is it getting down to the base of the skin, or is it on the fur? We don’t want to use the dog products on us, and we don’t want to use our products on the dogs. Don’t use any of those things we talked about on a cat.

Never use dog products on a cat.

In general, some would probably be okay, but if it has permethrin in it, you’re playing Russian roulette there. If it’s got moxidectin in it, which a lot of our canine products do, the amount of moxidectin in the cat product is a different concentration. We do have to be careful to make sure because we don’t want to accidentally overdose or underdose any of our pets for any of these things.

We’re talking about outdoor cats and dogs. What if I have a cat or a dog, but people in the city have dogs that don’t go outside?

They live in a high-rise.

What if my pets don’t go outside? Do I need to worry about ticks? Don’t forget the humans going outside. I’m just saying.

Let me tell you a traumatizing story that happened a couple of months ago at my parents’ house. We went to visit my parents’ house for the first time, which is in a rural place. They’ve done studies in city parks doing tick collections and Lyme disease prevalence. The place you go to socialize your animal or socialize yourself might be inundated with ticks. It doesn’t have to be an out-in-the-middle-of-Kansas situation. That was my situation.

We went fishing. I sprayed permethrin on our shoes and socks before we went. We were in a pretty well-manicured area around the pond. I do tick checks on my young kids. I have a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old. They’re fine. I was checking myself throughout the day, and I didn’t see anything on me. We go to bed. Everyone’s clean and showered.

We had gone back out that evening to mess around with my parents’ new Starlink. My mom was trying to get her Starlink installed, and my husband was helping her. We were in some taller grass areas. right beside their house, but they have deer and turkeys all over in their yards. A lot of people, even in urban areas, have coyotes, turkeys, and all sorts of things running around.

We come back in and go to bed. It turns out, my husband’s shoes, he took them off between the two twin beds our family was sleeping in that night. I was in bed with Luca, and I was hanging off the edge because he’s sprawled out, taking over a bunch of space. My husband’s in the other twin bed over by the Pack N Play with Matteo.

That is a PJ party.

It was super fun. I’ve got my arm hanging off the edge of the bed, and I’m breathing towards my arm and towards the open space between the beds, right over where his shoes were. I woke up at 2:00 in the morning to literally a sensation going up my arm, not down, which means that a tick got on me somewhere on my hand or wrist, which is what was hanging over the edge.

It’s going somewhere warm.

I could not go back to sleep. This was 2:00 in the morning. I’m like, “Are there ticks on my kid that I’m sharing? Did it come off him?” I washed him. I swear it probably came off my husband’s shoes from the stupid Wi-Fi antenna experiment that they were running out in the yard. They come inside in the middle of the night. I do tick work all the time, but I was traumatized.

If anyone had spotted it, it would have been you.

The one on me was a full-blown adult female. She’s not sneaky at all.

Is there anything pet owners can do to their yard?

I learned from Dr. Starkey. I spray my yard.

There’s something called tickscaping, which is like landscaping.

Tickscaping is like landscaping—it's about making your yard less inviting to ticks. Share on X

Strategies For Managing Ticks In Your Own Yard

I can’t wait to tell Matt, my gardener guy, “Matt, are you tickscaping today?”

“Can you go to tickscape my yard?” It’s making your yard less conducive to ticks in multiple ways. A part of that is trying not to make it enticing for wildlife to come in. We’re trying to keep the wildlife out if we can. We’re trying to keep it manicured. That’s part of it. We’re keeping the grass shorter and creating dry borders between where you spend time and where the wildlife is more likely to be. Those are places ticks don’t like to cross because they need moisture.

If you have a dry gravel area, dark wood chips, or something, they may not be able to traverse that to get into your yard. There are drugs you can add on top of it. Maybe I shouldn’t call them drugs, but there are sprays that you can add to your yard to kill what’s out there. Those only last so long. I do know that some people don’t like the idea of chemicals in their yard, but all of those other things are chemical-free.

Our guy uses cedar oil. It has no other chemicals in it. Before he even started doing it, I researched it, and it does work on the ticks. Something about the oil kills them. That’s what we use. It’s not a chemical, and it’s safe for animals.

We use Bayer.

I was using Bayer.

Chemistry makes a better life. I remember, Dr. Starkey, seeing a picture of your area. You demonstrated how you don’t spray in the open, sun-exposed grass. It’s more the shady areas where the leaves accumulate and things like that.

We’re targeting our yard for things like mosquitoes, too. Honestly, as bad as ticks are, I hate mosquitoes worse. Areas that get some shading remain more moist. Those are areas that are more likely to have wildlife traverse through them. If you have hedging, bushes. and shrubs, that’s where the wildlife is going to tuck away. That’s more likely where the concentration of ticks is more likely to be, too.

If you’ve got a big, open, expansive backyard, unless you know the wildlife is running through there, maybe that’s okay, but the edges where you’ve got more growth along the fence or whatever your backyard containment is, that’s more likely where they’re going to be more concentrated. I don’t think you’re wrong to spray all of it for ease and consistency because that’s the easier thing to do, but some of those areas may not need it as much, especially if you keep the grass short.

Let’s turn the channel to screwworm. Who named that? It sounds sexual in a weird way.

To me, it sounds serious.

It’s scary.

What’s going on with that?

First of all, let’s start with what a screwworm is.

The Reality And Containment Of The Screwworm Outbreak

Not a worm. I had to teach some folks about this. In our parasitology conference, we have a group of folks who help us manage the meeting. They are business people and meeting planners. They are not scientists. All of this happened the day I arrived on site to start this meeting, because I was coordinating the meeting. Screwworm happened the night before. We’re all talking about it. One of our speakers, who was supposed to come to this meeting, works for the USDA. He couldn’t because he’s having to stay in Iowa to identify all these maggots that are getting sent in.

They were like, “It’s a worm?” I was like, “It’s a fly,” and they were like, “They look like worms.” The larval stages of this fly are maggots to most of us. That’s the problematic phase of the life cycle. The adults aren’t causing problems. They’re not biting us and transmitting stuff. They lay their eggs on a wound, and then those larvae feed on living tissue.

Most maggots feed on dead tissue. We even use maggots medically sometimes. We use clean maggots for surgical debridement. They’ll eat it alive until it becomes a carcass. They eat from the outside in. The pictures are horrifying. We had an outbreak in the States back in 2017, down in the Florida Keys. We almost lost the Key deer as a species. They almost went extinct.

I remember that. They’re so cute.

I know. They’re little. We were able to contain that one more easily because we intervened really quickly and treated as many animals as we could. There’s one highway in and out of that entire region. We’re talking about Texas and New Mexico with this one. There are miles without a cow on it. There’s not a lot of surveillance considering the expanse that we’re dealing with this time. That’s what gives me the most concern. I know people are getting really active and involved in trying to do as much surveillance as possible, but it’s a huge area.

Can those animals that are being affected be saved?

How do you get rid of it?

Fortunately, they’re flies, and flies are insects. Insecticides work pretty well. We have quite a few chemicals that can treat insects as long as they’re feeding on the chemical. In this case, they’re feeding on animal fluids and tissues. The drug needs to be in or on the animal to provide efficacy, so doing fly sprays out in the environment may not necessarily be all that effective. Part of our management strategy for screwworms is to release more flies into the environment. That’s such a cool thing. I hope we have time to talk about it later.

We want to make sure that animals are protected with a really long-lasting and strong insecticide. On the pet side, there actually are a few compounds that we use and have used in the States for several years for some of them to treat fleas and ticks. We’ve gotten conditional approval, such as an emergency youth authorization, from the FDA to be treatments for screwworm.

If the pet is treated with that for fleas and ticks normally, then it’s on board. If a screwworm fly were to lay eggs on it, and those maggots hatched out of that egg, they’re going to start feeding. They’re going to ingest the thing that kills the ticks and the fleas, and it’s likely going to kill the screwworm maggots the same. A few products do have that.

How did this happen?

How did it get back to us?

How did the screwworm start up again? We hadn’t had it in so long.

It never fully went away everywhere. It was eradicated from the States. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, that’s when the eradication happened in the United States. There was a massive effort. I can talk about how they did this. They irradiate male flies. They raise the flies in the lab, save the males, and irradiate them so they cannot breed. They could try, but they’re sterile. The biology of these flies is that the female only mates once. If she mates with a male fly who has been sterilized, she can’t have the next generation. By doing that and releasing tons of these male flies, we swarm out all the wild males that really could breed a female. She has an event that happened that leads to nothing. She can’t lay eggs.

Over time, we were able to push it out of the States. We collectively worked with governments and organizations South of our borders to get it pushed all the way down to Panama. They’ve been living with screwworms in South America ever since then. It’s normal there. There are collective efforts and shifts in governments, etc. This thing has been slowly creeping back up through Central America and Mexico for the past several years.

 

This is something that we’ve been keeping an eye on and talking about as parasitologists. As soon as the COVID buzz was off, this was the next buzz to talk about in the parasitology world. It got close enough that it had truly spilled over the border. I checked the dashboard right before this call. There are seven confirmed cases. Two dogs, and then livestock. It was Texas, pretty much, but there is a New Mexico County where a dog resided that ended up testing positive for this.

This might seem like a dumb question, but is any of our meat infected?

Even if we ate them, it wouldn’t hurt us. It’s extra protein. It’s really gross to think about. It is going to be one thing that people are looking at in meat inspection because you get the whole carcass there. They’re definitely going to be doing surveillance. That’s a great access point with trained folks to make sure there’s nothing on that carcass when it goes into slaughter. It’s not going to affect the quality of your meat other than the lesion itself.

I don’t think these animals would go through commercial slaughter processes. If you had a cow in your backyard that had it, you could probably consume what part of the carcass didn’t have the active lesion. I don’t know that many of us would do that because it seems kind of weird. This is not going to be something that should impact any of the food we’re consuming.

The impact is going to come in how many animals get infected and thus cannot make it to production, and our meat prices go up. We have fewer animals to be able to go to the commercial food chain. That’s the big concern. It’s going to be a huge hit to our agricultural industries, not just cattle. These things feed on everything.

The farm dogs, too, when you think about it. You see these big herds of cattle on Texas ranches and stuff. How in the heck could you protect? I can’t even imagine. You could overhead spray them, but that doesn’t get to the underside. I read that the baby cow had it in the navel.

It’s a fresh wound. The umbilicus is a recent wound. The flies are attracted to that. Any kind of maggot-creating fly is going to be attracted to that. The problem with the screwworms, though, is that they’re not going to stop at the dead and decayed tissue. They’re going to keep going. It’s important for the pets to use that year-round approach that’s got good insecticide control in it.

Your pet will be protected should they come to the flies. For the livestock, fortunately, some of these drugs that have that emergency use are longer-acting and things that could be applied on board. What we’re leaning toward is using some of these to make sure these herds have that chemical on board when the flies strike, so that the maggots can’t continue.

Go through the herd and inject them.

There are several products that are available for cattle. There are even some unique ones. We got emergency use to use fluralaner in cattle in the US, which is a commercially available product in Latin America for cattle. We didn’t have it commercially available here, but we have dog and cat fluralaner here. The brand name is Bravecto for that one. Exzolt is the cattle version. That is available for people to choose from amongst other things, like macrocyclic lactones and other more classic ectoparasite products for large animals, to try to provide prevention slash treatment for screwworm.

General question. Are there any parasites that we should give a little more attention to or that are of interest?

Do you mean pets?

We talked about ticks and screwworms. Are there any other bad parasites for pets?

Heartworm is a passion of mine.

The heartworm pill is a great treat for Libby. She loves it.

My dogs enjoy their heartworm experiment every time we do it, too.

It’s like a trip.

Some of them love it. If your dog loves that treat experience, do that as long as you can remember to do it. There are injections for heartworm, too. I’m a busy mom. I have a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old. My dogs get that. Granted, before I had my children, I was good at remembering things more consistently.

It’s convenient.

The Importance Of Year-Round Parasite Prevention

I’m not going to play around with the heartworm where I live. I’m going to make sure they’ve got that on board, but that injection doesn’t do a bunch of other stuff. It does not do fleas. It does not do ticks. There’s another injection that could. We’ve got a whole bunch of different products. You have to combine forces sometimes to get the best coverage for your animal against the things you’re concerned about, knowing your own issues.

For me, it’s remembering and getting busy. I want to be compliant. I do things to help facilitate my being compliant. Every owner is going to be a little different. Heartworm can be fatal. It damages the vessels in the lungs and the heart. It starts damaging those vessels quickly. In dogs, we have a treatment, but the treatment is horrible. Should I say what the drug is?

Yes.

It’s arsenic. That’s not a fun thing we want to give.

It’s horrible. Did you see that article about the dog that developed horrible infections in the areas where you give the melarsomine injection? They surgically removed that, and the dog got septic. It was just a nightmare. I thought, “Of all things, this could have been prevented in so many ways.” They’re making generics of heartworm preventatives. There’s no excuse to not have your dog on heartworm preventatives all year-round, no matter where you live, including Antarctica.

I’ll let them off the hook.

Tell us about your pets.

I’ve got two Weenie dogs. One’s a Weenie mix from Alabama.

You call them Weenie dogs, too.

My husband is from Argentina, so we call them solchicha half the time. That’s Spanish for hot dogs. Kevin is nine. She was a roadside abandoned dog. I found her a long time ago. She’s been with us a long time. Like any crazy person, I was buying a house and about to have a baby in a few months, and I said, “Let’s get another dog.”

We acquired Bruno, who is a full-bred long-haired Dachshund. One of the students here found them. I was like, “If I’m spending a ton of money in that situation, I would much rather get shelter dogs as a personal decision.” I was like, “At least she’ll go on to help shelter dogs with the funding that came from me getting Bruno.”

Kevin is a classic Weenie dog. She has her people, and then she doesn’t like anyone else. She doesn’t even like my kids because she grew up without them. She’s not used to children. We got Bruno when my oldest was three-and-a-half. The baby’s starting to get to interface with Bruno, too. She will let Luca do whatever he wants to her. She doesn’t like strangers. She’s still a Weenie dog in that regard, but when it comes to the little boys and us, she will let them grab her. She tolerates any and everything he has ever done, and I’m like, “You are the most chill little Weenie dog that I’ve ever seen.”

I love those long-haired Dachshunds. Janet, they’re like little miniature Irish Setters with that cute fur.

With a Swiffer.

We shave her. She still has her long hair on her ears and tail, but it’s so hot here in the summer. We shave her down everywhere else, and I think she enjoys that more. She’s soft where she is shaved.

I’m curious. Were you raised in the country, or are you a city girl?

I was raised in the middle of nowhere. We lived in Wichita for the first five years of my life, which is a city, and then in Topeka for a couple of years. My dad is an avid outdoors person. He wanted to raise cattle. He was born in the city his whole life, and he was like, “I want to do cattle.” My parents bought a big farm North of Topeka, and that’s where I was raised for a part of my childhood that I remember.

I’m curious. He was a city person who went to the country. He’d gone to the country.

He still liked doing outdoorsy stuff, even though he lived in the city. They would go fishing. He would go hunting, etc., but he wanted to live in a place where he could walk out the back door and do that.

Lindsay, I’m going to ask you our guest question. What is your pet or human peeve?

A pet peeve?

It can be about a human or a pet.

I was going to say grammar. I have editor roles in a lot of different things that I do, so I notice weird grammar things. Giving table scraps.

To dogs?

Food is love.

She’s not a nutritionist.

I’ve got dogs that are prone to back issues. I’m clearly struggling with self-control when it comes to food, but with the dogs, I’m like, “We can control this.” My two-year-old is still in the high chair. He’s sitting next to me. I’m close to him, and I see him grab something as he’s finishing up. He’s looking down at the floor, like, “Bruno?” and starts to move his hand. I’m like, “No,” but on the floor it goes. I’m like, “You turd. Stop feeding the dogs.”

This has been incredibly informative. I could talk about ticks all day because people don’t believe me how awful it is when you do get Lyme.

Janet, tell Lindsay about the stupid question that you ran into at the cocktail party at the crossroads.

I was at a party, and somehow, Lyme disease came up. And people here know that I’ve had Lyme. They call me and are like, “What did you do?”

Everybody knows it.

It was a big deal. A dear friend of ours is like, “You can only get it from deer ticks. You don’t have to read about any other kind of ticks. It’s not about the deer. It’s not about the chip.” I finally said, “I can’t talk with you. You can’t even educate yourself.” I was holding back. I choose to be pretty passionate about it.

I start going off on people like that with all this information, and then they look at me and walk away because they think I’m nuts. There is something happening here in Nantucket, with 45% of the residents, which is small.

I read that, Lindsay. Did you read that?

They have the Alpha-gal.

Alpha-Gal Syndrome And Red Meat Allergies In Humans

We didn’t even talk about Alpha-gal, but that’s the most in-the-news tick-associated thing.

What’s the deal with Alpha-gal, Dr. Starkey?

You can’t have dairy products, such as meat and milk. It is in anything that comes out of a cow.

It could also be other red meat animals, such as pork. If you like lamb or that sort of thing, it’s potentially off the table for you and potentially forever. This is a human-only thing. I’m a veterinary parasitologist, but I do tick stuff. I’m not sure if the mechanism has been fully understood as to how this happens. It’s highly linked to lone star ticks, but not exclusively. There are cases that are caused by other ticks, and it happens in other parts of the globe where lone star ticks aren’t.

Your body sees this Alpha-gal substance as foreign and reacts to it when you ingest it. Something with skin immunity, where the ticks are feeding, because we’re not eating ticks. They feed on us, and our skin immunity responses, and then we end up with a gut response later when we eat. Some people have mild reactions, like, “My belly doesn’t feel good, but the chicken is still so delicious, so I keep eating.” Some people died, like anaphylactic full-blown. Sometimes, it extends beyond the meat products, but it is things from those animals, too.

 

It could be dairy or gelatin. Gelatin is in so much candy and other things. I had a student. Poor gal. She could not even eat something cooked in a skillet that had previously cooked meat. She was so sensitive. I can’t imagine how in tune you have to be with what’s going on. If you eat outside of your house at all, how concerned, honestly, would you have to be, depending on your level of allergy? It’s bad. It’s starting to be reportable in different states, which is why a lot of people are talking about it. We’ve got better diagnostics for it. People are talking about it more.

It’s largely under-reported, as every tick-borne disease, honestly, is, because human diagnostics aren’t out there screening for these things. It’s only when the person feels ill, goes to the TENS doctor, and gets the right diagnosis done that we figure out what’s going on. Alpha-gal is scary. I love meat. That’s the tick that was crawling on me, the one that’s most notorious for associating with Alpha-gal. I’ve had that tick feed on me. I can still consume meat products, but that may shift if more of those ticks feed on me. I don’t know if I’m immune to the reaction.

I’m near Nantucket. They have found that sales of meat in restaurants are down, and there’s an increase in vegetarianism because of Alpha-gal syndrome on Nantucket. It’s bad. We can’t thank you enough.

I told you, Janet. I never miss one of her webinars. This is a perfect example, honest to God.

This was so fun.

Now that I’m retired, my sisters will call me, and I’m like, “Can’t talk. I’m listening to a webinar.” I’m going to tell you, Lindsay, and you’ll find this out someday when you retire, that I can tell in the first five minutes if it’s going to be a good webinar or not. When we go to Florida, I walk every morning and put in a podcast or webinar. It’s the same thing. To be honest, that’s how Janet and I have got a lot of our guests. Dr. Boyko, who founded Embark DNA, his webinar is good. I’ll call and email anybody.

We have met so many fascinating people. Dr. Breitschwerdt, we had him on. I never thought Ed Breitschwerdt would do our show. I don’t know him. We had a delightful hour with him. 

Like listening to webinars, with podcasts, you know within the first five minutes whether you’re going to like it or not. Also, books in the first three chapters.

We had Dr. Cluck’s Backyard Chickens with Dr. Pitesky from UC Davis. That was so much fun. We have met the nicest people doing this show.

It’s a lot of fun.

I’m so glad you emailed me randomly.

Where did you get back from? Were you in the Midwest?

No, I was in Puerto Rico. It was amazing. Our parasitology conference moves around every summer to a different location.

Summer in Puerto Rico?

Back then, we were in St. Louis. For this conference, we were in Puerto Rico. I was sad to get on the plane to come home. I was like, “This was so nice.”

Were you there without the family? Were you there by yourself?

Since I was in charge of the meeting, I knew I would have zero free time.

You were busy.

The family didn’t come with me, but they had plenty of fun on their own. My oldest and husband are on an RV road trip. They saw the Argentina friendly game in Auburn. They got to see Messi play. My husband, being from Argentina, and my son, being six, that was a life-altering moment for them. They’re having fun. They’re at the beach down in Florida. It’s fine. They’ll come home eventually.

I have to ask you. One of my best friends is from Venezuela. He is a retired PhD chemist. I love South American men because every time I see him, it’s Alicita. He picks me up off the ground. I call him mi novio, which is my sweetheart. I know a few things in Spanish!

We’re having our kitchen redone. The guys will be down on the floor, and Libby starts licking them. I’ll go, “Besame mucho.” They crack up.

They love it.

Thank you. This has been enlightening. We appreciate you. I hope our readers learned a lot. I know we say the word tick a lot, but it’s important. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for liking and sharing with us. We’re number two in our category, so we’re really psyched, and that’s all because of you. Thank you so much. Dr. Starkey, it’s been a pleasure. Alice, anything else?

If you have any emails or questions you want answered of a veterinary nature, please email us at SOPPodcasts.com. Have a great day, everyone.

Thanks for tuning in.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Lindsay Starkey
• Remove a Tick the Right Way: Safe & Simple Steps
• Companion Animal Parasite Council
• American Heartworm Society
• New World Screwworm Outbreak

 

About Dr. Lindsay Starkey

Dr. Starkey earned her bachelor’s degree in animal science from the University of Arkansas and her DVM and PhD degrees at Oklahoma State University, where her graduate research focused on vector-borne infections. She completed her residency training through the National Center for Veterinary Parasitology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Starkey recently rejoined Oklahoma State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine as an associate professor after several years at Auburn University. She is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Microbiology with a subspecialty in parasitology. She is involved in various research projects involving vectors, vector-borne pathogens, and diagnostic parasitology. She also teaches parasitology to veterinary students and has received 2 teaching awards, most recently the Zoetis Distinguished Teacher Award. She currently serves as a board member for the National Center for Veterinary Parasitology and the American Heartworm Society.