The Terrible Terror of Ticks-Fear is Justified

Ticks are the scourge of the summer months, and they’re not just pesky, they can be deadly.  Ticks carry all sorts of disease, some of which will make you vaguely ill, and others which may cost you your life, or at the least your quality of life.

By Melinda Wenner Moyer at Slate.com:

All parents have at least one issue that keeps them up at night worrying over their kids. For some, it’s gun violence. Others, cyberbullying. For me—especially in the spring and summer—it’s ticks.

Ticks aren’t just gross (though gross they sure are). They’re dangerous. Every year we see more ticks spreading more nasty diseases, many of which are difficult to diagnose and treat. This is my plea: Take ticks seriously and consider doing more to keep you and your kids safe from them, because what you’ve been doing may not be enough.

Let’s start with some facts. Ticks in the U.S. can spread more than 14 diseases. They are “the most significant vectors of infectious diseases in the United States,” according to a write-up from a recent scientific conference. Research suggests that where I live, in the lower Hudson Valley in New York, more than half of adult-stage blacklegged ticks harbor the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. (It’s also carried by one-fifth of nymphal-stage blacklegged ticks—the tiny ones that are hard to see and therefore often go unnoticed for days.) Another one in five adult blacklegged ticks in the region is infected with the bacterium that causes anaplasmosis; one in 30 harbors the potentially deadly deer tick virus; and another one in 30 can pass along the parasite that causes babesiosis. And yes: Ticks can and do often harbor multiplepathogens, so that’s fun too.

You’ve probably heard about Lyme disease, named after the town that had a cluster of outbreaks of the illness in Connecticut in 1975. It’s a treatable bacterial infection that is estimated to sicken about 300,000 Americans a year, but it can be difficult to diagnose, particularly in the one-quarter of people who don’t develop the characteristic bull’s-eye rash. When left untreated, Lyme can spread to the joints, heart, muscles, and brain. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that one out of every five to 10 Lyme sufferers continues to have symptoms such as memory problems, joint pain, and sleep problems even after they have been fully treated. As for the other infections I mentioned: Anaplasmosis, caused by a bacterium, and babesiosis, caused by a parasite, both invade red blood cells, and although they are treatable, they can also be very hard to diagnose because they incite only vague flu-like symptoms. Deer tick fever, also known as powassan virus—what Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at New York’s Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, calls his “worst nightmare”—is an untreatable viral infection that, according to a recent study, has killed a whopping one-third of New Yorkers who have caught it since 2004.

But enough about the tick-borne diseases in my neck of the woods. Ticks make people sick everywhere in the U.S. People in the South and South Central states—especially North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri—have to contend with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a nasty bacterial infection spread by dog and wood ticks that can be fatal if antibiotic treatment isn’t started within several days of symptoms. They also have to watch out forehrlichiosis, a bacterial infection spread by the Lone Star tick; tularemia, a bacterial infection that can be spread by several ticks; Southern tick-associated rash illness, an infection whose cause is unknown and is frequently confused with Lyme; andHeartland virus, which is so new that no one knows much about it yet. Midwesterners have Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, and powassan to deal with. And out West, tick-borne diseases are less common, but they run the gamut: People bitten by ticks can come down with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, anaplosmosis, Lyme, tularemia, and three other lovely ones: Colorado tick fever, tick-borne relapsing fever, and 364D rickettsiosis. Think you’re safe because you live in a big city? Nah. American dog ticks, which can transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever, are crawling around many urban areas, and in recent years blacklegged ticks have been found in almost every borough of New York City. A whopping half of NYC blacklegged ticks harbor the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Freaked out yet?

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