Isoxazolines in canine parasite control

Kathryn E. Rief, MSPH, PhD, explains how veterinarians seeking reliable month‐long ectoparasite control can benefit from understanding isoxazoline pharmacodynamics, with lotilaner demonstrating rapid kill rates against hard‐to‐kill ticks such as Amblyomma americanum (lone star tick). By maintaining consistent systemic concentrations throughout the dosing interval, lotilaner may reduce the risk of tick‐borne pathogen transmission in canine patients.

Transcript

Kathryn E. Rief, MSPH, PhD: Thanks for having me. My name is Dr Kathryn E. Rief, and I’m an associate professor at Auburn University in the Department of Pathobiology. I love anything and everything that has to do with parasites, and my favorite parasite to study is definitely ticks and their associated pathogens. In my research program, we study parasites that affect anything from rodents to companion animals to food animals. One of the things we really like to do is link the public health aspects of parasites that commonly affect our...companion animals with potential public risk as well.

I’m really excited to share my presentation on kicking parasites to the curb. In this presentation, we will review common parasites that plague our pets and discuss the strategies and drugs we have to manage and treat those parasites. We’ll also talk about some newer innovations for broad parasite protection in our dogs. Specifically, we’ll discuss one of the newer isoxazolines, lotilaner, and some unique features of lotilaner—particularly its tick speed of kill against one of our hardest‐to‐kill tick species, the lone star tick.

One of our newer classes of ectoparasite control products is the isoxazolines. Isoxazolines are a bit different from some of our historic flea and tick control products; they are systemically distributed. In order for the flea or the tick to come into contact with an isoxazoline, it must start the bite. If we use a product where the parasite actually initiates the bite to contact the drug, we expect that drug to work fast enough to kill the tick, for example, before it has an opportunity to transmit any pathogens it’s carrying. Some pathogens transmit faster than others, but the faster we kill the tick, the lower the risk of transmission.

Now, many of the different isoxazoline‐containing products on the market may have similar labels, but our lab has done a deep dive over the past couple of years to see how quickly some of these different isoxazoline drugs—including drugs like lotilaner—actually start to work to kill ticks and whether they kill ticks at that same rate throughout the monthly dosing period. I’m excited [about] this presentation [and] to share the results of that study and discuss some of the other classes of drugs we have available to protect against or manage other parasite concerns for our dogs.