TRACKING PARASITIC DISEASES-MAPS OF PARASITE VECTOR PREVALENCE

摘要

The Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) has been placed in the very envious position of being able to utilize, for the purpose of parasite monitoring, the data accumulated each year by Banfield Pet Hospital, ANTECH Diagnostics, and IDEXX Laboratories. This is a remarkable treasure trove of information about the health of our pets throughout the United States. Because of the huge number of data points, these go way beyond simple surveys. The numbers of samples examined is staggering. There are 5million data points for canine heartworm; 0.23 million for feline heartworm; 3.8 million samples for canine roundworm; 0.75 million for feline roundworm; 3 million for canine Lyme disease; 2.9 million for canine ehrlichiosis; and 2.5 million for canine anaplasmosis. Again, this is a fairly phenomenal data set. There may be some double reporting, and there is no way that we can tell whether some dogs or cats were sampled before and after treatment, etc., but the reality is that this is a massive collection of numbers that is fairly unparalleled for any other set of disease agents anywhere.