Ask Laura: coverage for a Lyme Disease positive dog

Lyme Disease is quite contentious in the veterinary world because there are a lot of unknowns about the disease and how it affects dogs and cats.

For example, no-one really knows if Lyme Disease is "cured" when treated. It might just recede to come back at a later date - nobody really knows.

Here's a question from the comments in the Invisible Voices blog. It's a good one!

Question

One of my dogs tested low positive for Lyme disease, just curious if most anything that could happen to him now could be blamed on Lyme and therefore not covered?

Anne

[note that Anne is asking this question while researching pet insurance; she doesn't have a policy yet]

Answer

Anne, after much digging, I now know more than I ever wanted to about Lyme Disease. I'm sure I'm going to tell you some things you already know but here's some background on Lyme Disease for others reading this.

A positive test for Lyme Disease means that a cat or dog has antibodies to the bacteria and have these antibodies for one of three reasons:

1. he/she has an active infection;
2. he/she had an infection in the past and it's gone now; or
3. he/she has been vaccinated for Lyme Disease at some point in the past

The problem is that there is no test at present that can tell you which reason is causing the result.

Once a pet comes up Lyme-positive, some vets would opt to treat him/her with a month of Doxycycline (antibiotics) just to be sure of attacking the disease (reason 1), even if it's already cured or never existed in the first place (reason 2 or 3).

Others choose to wait and see if symptoms show up and then treat.

Another alternative is to do further titer tests to see check the antibodies levels. High levels of antibodies indicate an active infection; low levels indicate just antibodies, no infection.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to answer your question as our claims department would handle it Anne. You will have to ask the other insurers what they would do in the same situation.

Assuming the test occurs prior to you getting pet insurance (or in the waiting period):

• If you can prove the positive test is from a vaccination (from your vet records for example), then we'll treat your dog never having had Lyme Disease.
• If your dog has a positive Lyme Disease test and you decide to learn more by going for the titer test and find your dog has low levels of antibodies, we'll treat your dog as never having had Lyme Disease .
• Otherwise, we would exclude coverage for conditions that are known to be caused by Lyme Disease such as arthritis, limping, and just "not doing right". I know that's not a very satisfactory answer but Lyme Disease can manifest itself in all sorts of way. The good news is that things like cancer are not excluded as we do not believe they are more likely for a Lyme-positive dog.

If the positive test occured after the dog is covered by pet insurance (and the waiting period is up) and there were no signs that could indicate Lyme Disease, we'd cover whatever you and your veterinarian decide to do; the Lyme Disease would not a pre-existing condition.

As more comprehensive research becomes clear about Lyme Disease in pets and veterinarians come to a consensus on treatment approaches, we will update our approach accordingly.

NOTE: if you are planning on buying pet insurance and doing the test just to be sure about your dog or cat's lyme status, you should do that test after you have purchased your policy.

And that is the end of my tome on Lyme Disease for today!