Reactions to Lyme Disease Shots in Dogs
Dogs receive Lyme disease shots (vaccines) to prevent against contracting the disease when bitten by an infected tick. It's possible for the vaccine, like other common vaccines, to generate reactions in dogs. The vaccine sometimes causes harmful side effects to the dog's immune system that lead to allergies, seizures, aggression and even abnormal cell activity. Many of these side effects are rare.
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Significance
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The Lyme disease vaccine has met some controversy over its effectiveness as well as the overall safety of the vaccine.
Side Effects
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A dog given the Lyme vaccine may show symptoms of the disease. He may become lethargic, experience a loss of appetite and/or favor one leg (lameness). More severe side effects may include arthritis as well as kidney failure in some rare cases can occur.
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Time Frame
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Symptoms of Lyme disease can appear immediately or up to four or as many as eight weeks following the vaccination. In some instances, the symptoms mimic the disease so well that veterinarians administer testing for the actual disease in order to rule it out.
Lyme Vaccines
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There are a number of approved Lyme vaccines available for dogs. Veterinarian Ron Hines---a contributing author to 2ndchance.info---recommends Recombitek Lyme, a vaccine manufactured by Merial, because it's found to produce fewer side effects. He recommends vaccinating the dog annually, especially for dogs at risk of coming into contact with an infect tick.
Considerations
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Little research has been done to study the reaction of Lyme disease in dogs beyond 24 hours after the vaccine is administered. For this reason, the long-term implications of administering the vaccine aren't yet known.
A vaccine cannot guarantee the dog from contracting Lyme disease and should only be considered another method of defense along with tick and flea collars and periodic checks of the dog's body for ticks.
The safer vaccines were designed to protect the dog from a specific antigen protein commonly associated with Lyme disease. Yet it was later learned that the antigen protein is important for the dog to build resistance to the disease. As of 2010, Lyme vaccines don't contain this protein.
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References
- Photo Credit dog image by Piotr Markowski from Fotolia.com
