Cats and dogs have medications to deter ticks and fleas from infesting their bodies. They’re usually administered every 6 months to a year. Why can’t humans administer something similar on themselves to deter ticks, especially people who work in the forest, or who live rurally?
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Im assuming because unlike cats and dogs we have non medical ways to prevent getting bitten by them
One. We got hands. They don’t.
Two. We got a lot less body hair than them. It helps solve a lot of problems. Like lice trying to hide under fur.
Three. We did have that problem. Chemicals were made that killed off lice and ticks so that we didn’t have to live with infestations
It’s extremely expensive to develop a drug for use by humans.
Not so much for animals.
Additionally there’s a pretty low demand. I lived in the woods my whole childhood and we just knew to check for ticks every night, which is trivial since we don’t exactly have fur. Inspite of every person i know having had countless ticks i don’t know a single person that has gotten Lyme disease.
That means a medication hasn’t been developed and tested.
I have yet to try it but a tree trimmer/hunter I know swears by putting a flea & tick dog collar around his boots and one on his belt. Just wash your hands after touching it.
The YouTube channel SciShow has a video on this
Ttl;dw: the chemical pathways that work in pets may be risky to* humans, and the process to approve a drug for pets is much quicker than for humans.
(Edit from me misremembering the exact reason)
We have sprays and other things to deter ticks. It’s better to use them when you’re going to be at risk of being around ticks, rather than take medication that has more side effects.
We use medication on animals as they have fur for the ticks to cling to, and spend much more time running in long grass and being around other animals ticks may be on than humans do.
For our risk, when we have preventatives, a medication isn’t worth the dangers of the side effects.
Great questions, from 5 minutes of reading up on the internet about it, it looks like a few reasons:
Dogs and cats get long-lasting tick meds because their bodies handle those drugs differently. Humans bathe often and have stricter safety rules, so similar treatments aren’t common. But new pills for people are in development that may work like pet meds, offering up to a month of protection against ticks.
those medications would cause liver failure with long term use. for something that has a much shorter life span it doesn’t matter
The anti-tick medication we give cats and dogs is based on organophosphates. You know what’s another type of organophosphates? Chemical weapons like Sarin, VX, and Novichok.
Over time, the medication can cause kidney and neurological damage on our pets. It’s just that since we don’t really have any good alternative to avoid and remove ticks and fleas, we care more about these animals not being bitten than any harm done by the medication. But we can check ourselves for ticks and easily remove them if necessary, without basically poisoning ourselves in the process, so it seems like using dangerous chemicals is overkill.
They also live for a lot less years than a human, so they don’t accumulate the same damage as a human being given the medication their entire lives.
some things that are toxic over a long time are ok to use on pets, not because we don’t care if they are harmed but because if it takes more than ~15 years to cause harm it’s probably not the thing that’s gonna do them in. Similar to why a bunch of seniors volunteered after the Fukashima power plant disaster in Japan. They received enough radiation that it might increase their chances of developing cancer in the next 20 years but if you’re already 75……. it’s probably not a huge problem
Because it’s waaaaay easier to have drugs approved for cats and dogs than for humans; doing the safety studies on humans would be expensive and time consuming and potentially end up not showing enough safety. Drug companies only invest when they think there is a good chance of making their money back. Given the main market would be people whose lives involve being out in the woods a lot, it may not be enough people to justify the expense.
There actually was a human vaccine for Lyme Disease between 1998 and 2002 – I think I’m one of the few people that got it. It was discontinued by the manufacturer in 2002 due to “insufficient consumer demand”. From what I can tell, it became a talking point for anti-vaxxers and so it got a reputation as not being safe, even though there was no solid evidence that the vaccine caused any long-term side effects.
For the collar / skin based tick medications, it’s cuz humans don’t have fur to help home the medicine to the skin and also shower regularly which would wash the medicine away and prevent it from building up enough to kill ticks.
For the medication the animals ingest, it’s because it hasn’t been tested on humans because there’s worry about long term use causing organ damage. Like 20 years of use might destroy your liver. We don’t worry about that in dogs and cats cuz, well, they don’t live 20 years anyways
There was a vaccine that was made against lyme disease. It didn’t get popular enough, so it got trashed. Lyme disease is awful and it was preventable – I am truly sorry for everyone affected, and everyone to be.
Seriously. I have alpha gal now, and would love to have a preventative.