Why year-round isoxazolines are important for flea and tick protection

Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, DACVM (Parasitology), explains why flea prevention is a year-round conversation. Cat fleas spend almost all of their adult life on pets, most of the flea burden lives as juvenile stages in the home, and waiting until an infestation appears can create weeks to months of risk to not only to the pet, but to people in the household as well.

Transcript

Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, DACVM (Parasitology): With things like fleas, most of the time clients know that they have them. It's always amazing to me when a dog comes in scratching and you can see all the fleas, and the owner says, "Really? I had no idea." Where does your dog sleep...in your bed? How do you not know? But most of the time you do see that, because the cat flea lives 99% of its adult life on the pet.

With ticks—hard-bodied ticks—they'll live 2 to 3 years and only spend two to three days on your pet. If they're smaller, like in the nymph or larval stage, they're going to be so small that you won't see them. One vet I knew took off his wedding ring after changing the oil in his car, found a little nymph underneath the ring, sent it off, and it tested positive. So they're hard to find.

I think we really need to be talking to everybody about putting pets on an isoxazoline year-round if you're in the US. I live in Southern California, and we often think there are flea seasons even though we have fairly consistent weather, but certainly there are times when we see more fleas than others. A lot of clients will say, "I just need the medication because I have fleas now... normally we never see them, so it's not a big deal." When we come back to the life cycle and understand that the vast majority of fleas are actually juvenile forms in your house, once you have an infestation established it can take several weeks to a couple of months to get it under control.

What I tell clients is: "It's not just for your pet that I'm giving this medication and asking you to use it year-round, it's also for your protection. In Southern California we've had outbreaks of things like typhus. One of my good friends...when she and her now-husband were engaged, he got typhus from a single flea bite during a routine vaccination clinic. He was in a coma for a couple of days, required months to recover, and they had to postpone the wedding. From a single flea bite there's a real danger to people.

If you're on year-round protection and your dog is exposed to fleas, many of the current products kill fleas within 24 hours, so the risk to humans is minimal. But if we wait until it's a problem and the fleas have already started laying eggs in the house, now you have months of risk for the people in that home.

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