Have you heard about leptospirosis?

While you can certainly find it there, leptospirosis is no walk in the park.  A serious and sometimes fatal disease, “lepto” is a bacteria spread through urine from infected wild or domestic animals that contaminates surfaces like vegetation, including grass, as well as mud, soil or water.

It can survive long periods of time in the environment and is absorbed through the skin, placing both animals and humans at risk. 

Following recent cases and fatalities on Long Island, veterinarians are taking steps to reduce that risk, informing their clients and adding leptospirosis to their list of core vaccines recommended for annual canine care.

At present, there is no human vaccine available for leptospirosis in this country. In China, when the disease was first recognized in 1930, infection rates soared in agrarian provinces throughout the country where people often had direct contact with infected farm animals, reaching epidemic proportions in the decade 1960-70, and again as recently as 1987.

Its efforts to control the spread using better management of animal care, improved sanitation, and vaccination of both animals and humans has helped make a significant reduction in infection.

The CDC estimates that 100 to 150 cases of leptospirosis in humans are reported each year in the United States, 30 percent of which are fatal.  The NIH lists approximately 1.03 million human cases worldwide each year, with 58,900 deaths, making leptospirosis a serious health concern.

In suburbs like ours, dogs are often exposed after being outside, where urine excreted by farm animals or local wildlife lands on surfaces in the environment.  Infection rates often spike after rainstorms as runoff washes bacteria into streets and puddles.

It is important to note that a dog need only walk into an infected area to contract the disease.  In humans, it is absorbed into soft membranes on the body—our eyes, nose or mouth—after we’ve touched a contaminated liquid or surface. 

It can be absorbed from eating or handling contaminated food, soil, or water following floods or hurricanes, or from caring for an infected farm animal or pet.

Lepto is curable if caught and treated early. However, diagnosis is often challenging since symptoms, which may include dehydration, diarrhea, fever, lethargy, vomiting and weight loss, may also be symptomatic of other ailments.  Delayed diagnosis may result in delayed treatment, and great expense. 

Even after intensive care, leptospirosis may prove fatal since kidney and liver failure are possible.

With the potential for a poor prognosis in an infected pet, the risk to their owners, plus the lack of a human vaccine in the United States, our best hope to protect ourselves and our dogs is to vaccinate them.

Protecting our dogs means protecting ourselves. And whose best friend would want it any other way?