Central New Yorkers might want to pick up an extra bottle of insect repellent. Local microbiologists have found ticks are colonizing faster than normal this Spring and bringing with them a growing number of pathogens beyond Lyme disease.
“If you get bitten, you have a one in three chance that you got bitten by Lyme disease, positive tick,” warned Upstate Medical Center Professor of Microbiology, Saravanan Thangamani. But, he says, deer ticks are increasingly carrying other pathogens that put people with compromised immune systems at serious risk.
Of 442 ticks tested at the lab between March 15 to May 6 this year, most submitted carried Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease; 11 percent of the deer ticks carried Babesia microti, causing yellow fever; and 18 percent carry Anaplasmosis, which can cause severe flu like symptoms if left untreated.
“Based on the data, it is clear that Babesia-positive and Anaplasia-positive ticks are also emerging in addition to Lyme disease-positive ticks,” said Thangamani.
If bitten, he said people should take it seriously but not assume they have automatically been exposed to the bacterium.
“Just because the tick is positive, it doesn't mean the Borrelia that is the causative agent of Lyme disease has been transmitted to the human,” Thangamani said.
If someone is bitten, he advised pulling the tick immediately, “put it in a zip lock bag and send it to a lab for testing.” If it comes up positive, he added, “they can take that to a clinician, it will be an additional data the clinician can take into consideration when treating the patient.”
While there is no vaccine to guard against an infected tick, he said there is prevention. Whenever outside hiking, gardening, or walking the dog, Thangamani said to check for ticks on your body from head to toe, do the same for your pet. Finally, he said put all worn clothing in the dryer on high heat to kill any hitchhiking ticks and take a shower. Once a tick is removed, find out where to send it for testing here: www.nyticks.org
