Published on Jun 30, 2019
You have to remember that tick testing isn’t perfect and can miss things but it’s a place to start & that it only follows that since ticks are filled with many pathogens, people will be too.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Health officials say deer ticks that can carry Lyme disease have turned up for the first time in eastern Nebraska.
State health officials said Tuesday that lab tests are being done to determine whether the deer ticks collected carry the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. The ticks were found in Douglas, Sarpy and Saunders counties.
Lyme disease can cause fever, headache, fatigue and a skin rash. Health officials say most people recover completely, although some may be left with joint pain that can be treated with medication.
**Comment**
Another tick where it’s not supposed to be….
I wonder when authorities will wave the white flag and admit tick maps are worthless because ticks will go wherever they they please?
https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-unknowns-of-the-asian-longhorned-tick/
This ought to sound unexceptional. Ticks are normal on the upper East Coast; after all, tick-transmitted Lyme diseasewas first identified next door, in Connecticut. But the tick that covertly slid its pointy barbed mouthparts into an unlucky 66-year-old Yonkers resident was something new. It was the first invasive tick to arrive in the United States in 50 years, and this was the first time it had bitten a human.
That bite didn’t make its victim sick. But that it occurred at all is causing scientists to realize how little they know about the insect involved, known as the Asian longhorned tick: what diseases it transmits, where it prefers to live, and how it manages to move across long distances. Behind those unanswered questions looms a larger problem: We haven’t paid as much attention to ticks as we have to other insects that carry diseases. We have a long way to go to catch up—just as changes in weather patterns have ticks on the move too.
Until recently, the Asian longhorned tick’s home range was understood to be eastern China and Russia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and a few Pacific islands. In those countries, it harbors an array of bacterial and viral diseases that infect humans, including a potentially deadly hemorrhagic fever. It’s even more feared for the way it attacks livestock. This tick reproduces asexually, laying thousands of eggs at a time and producing waves of offspring that extract so much blood that grown cattle grow weak and calves die.
In August 2017, a woman who kept a single sheep on a property in the northwest corner of New Jersey, in the midst of a neighborhood of big houses and big lawns, walked into the Hunterdon County health department to complain that she had found ticks on the animal. What she didn’t realize, until horrified employees told her, was that she had ticks on herself as well, more than 1,000 speck-sized larvae all over her clothing.
The investigators gave the woman a spare set of pants and went back to her house with her—where their boots were immediately covered with crawling larvae, many times more than would be normal on a property that size. They found hundreds of ticks sucking on the ears and under the coat of her poor sheep.
An insecticide bath took care of the bugs on the sheep, and a hard freeze in November eliminated the ones in the paddock. By that time, Rutgers University researchers had identified it as the longhorned tick, confirming the bug’s first sighting outside of a quarantine station (where twice in the 1960s they were removed from animals being brought into the United States). They had no idea where it had come from, but they wondered: Given that the paddock was so populated, how long had the ticks been here? Was it long enough that they might already be moving around?
Apparently yes. The CDC said last Wednesday the exotic tick has been found in 11 states now. One is New York, where the Yonkers man lives, about 80 miles away from that infested paddock. At the time of the bite, he didn’t travel much: He hadn’t been outside Westchester County in a month. He wasn’t all that outdoorsy either.
But when investigators inspected the man’s house they found ticks and tick larvae all around it. Unsettlingly, they also found ticks where existing science says ticks shouldn’t be: resting in full sun in the middle of a well-tended lawn, instead of in shaggy, shady tall grass.
The exotic Asian longhorned tick has been found in 11 states now.
“I’m alarmed,” says Bobbi Pritt, a physician and pathologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, who wrote a medical journal commentary reacting to the news of the bite, which was disclosed last month in a medical journal. “Though I’m not surprised. We knew this tick was here, we knew it had the capability of biting people based on its behavior in other countries. So now that raises a lot more questions.”
The problem is finding answers. It’s a truism among tick researchers that their work is underfunded compared with other insect vectors. After all, the US public health system was founded on fighting mosquitoes: The first local health department, created in Philadelphia in 1794, rose out of a devastating yellow fever epidemic the year before. The CDC itself emerged from a World War II program created to suppress malaria in the South, where the illness had wreaked havoc on war preparations, leaving soldiers unfit for duty and taking equipment manufacturing offline
To this day, the CDC maintains national maps of the ranges of different mosquito species. States, counties, and cities operate more than 700 mosquito-abatement districts, and the American Mosquito Control Association estimates those agencies collectively spend $200 million a year on catching, analyzing, and killing the bugs. Ticks don’t get anywhere near that kind of coordinated attention or money. The Entomological Society of America warned four years ago that the US needs comprehensive anti-tick strategies, but only a few states, such as New York in 2018 and Connecticut this year, have even created tick surveillance and control programs.
There’s good reason to do that: Ticks and the diseases they transmit—not just Lyme disease, but babesiosis, erlichiosis, anaplasmosis, and others—represent a huge public health problem. Last year, the CDC reported that cases of disease carried by insects tripled between 2004 and 2016; three-fourths of those cases were caused by ticks. In the period of that study, the CDC identified seven diseases that ticks pass to humans, several of them fatal, that were either brand-new, or new to the US.
When those diseases are diagnosed in people, the CDC requires them to be reported to the agency so the data can be summarized and mapped. But tick scientists such as Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, have said for years that what is most needed is routine catching and sampling of ticks themselves, as is done by mosquito control agencies, to figure out what species are hatching and what diseases they may carry.
At the moment, Ostfeld says, tick surveillance is driven by the interests of academic scientists.
“It’s very much a patchwork,” he says. “You tend to find ticks in the study sites of people who are looking for them, but that leaves vast parts of the country completely unstudied.”
Ben Beard, a medical entomologist who is deputy director of the CDC’s division of vector-borne diseases (“vector” is shorthand for “insects that transmit diseases when they bite”), says that is beginning to change. “We have funded state health departments to begin efforts for tick surveillance,” he says.
The primary source is a CDC program called “epidemiology and laboratory capacity funding,” which sends about $200 million a year to all 50 state health departments; $16 million of that goes for all diseases carried by insects. Until recently the funds were locked to specific projects, but this year the CDC agreed to allow states more latitude in how they spend the money. The result will be a map, by state and possibly by county, of ticks and the pathogens they carry, which the CDC plans to publish once a year.
Beard said it isn’t possible to say at this point how many jurisdictions will choose to concentrate on ticks or how much of that $16 million will be spent on tracking them. So the surveillance picture is likely to have gaps, but “over time it should transform the patchwork to something that is more systematic and complete.” (The CDC has also funded five “centers of excellence” at universities to increase work on diseases carried by insects, including ticks.)
That’s a beginning—though, given the speed at which ticks are emerging and tickborne diseases are increasing, it seems likely not to be enough. What’s needed are investments in tick biology and ecology, and investigations into how ticks arrive in new territory and what carries them around.
Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, and the author of Big Chicken.
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**Comment**
With that in mind, I encourage you to contact your representatives and senators educating them of this fact. Every state should provide FREE tick testing to discover all the various pathogens present. This would help back up what Lyme literate doctors have discovered long ago – people are infected with a multitude of pathogens from ticks, requiring many medications – NOT the CDC’s abysmally limited “Lyme guidelines” of a mono-therapy of doxycycline. Little research has been done on concurrent infection within the human body, but what little there is indicates these patients have more severe illness for a longer duration of time necessitating many different drugs.
For more on the Asian Longhorned tick: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/09/12/three-surprising-things-i-learned-about-asian-longhorned-ticks-the-tick-guy-tom-mather/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/30/invasive-longhorned-tick-found-in-east-tennessee/
This is one of the so-called Hyalomma ‘super ticks’ which have been found in Germany
A TICK capable of carrying killer Ebola-like viruses has been found in the UK after spreading across Europe, health officials say.
The blood-sucking Hyalomma rufipes tick is usually only found in Africa, Asia and parts of southern Europe.
But Public Health England says that one, which was 10 times larger than average, was discovered in Dorset last year.
Tests found the creature was carrying Rickettsia spotted fever, which can cause headaches, cramps and blisters in humans.
But the ticks are also known to carry the deadly Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHF) – a deadly disease dubbed the “next Ebola.”
The horrific virus, which is also known as Congo Fever, results in death in around two fifths of all cases – and there are no proven vaccines available to prevent it.
Those unlucky enough to catch the disease often suffer from internal bleeding, before organ failure strikes down the sufferer.
Ebola is also categorised as a hemorrhagic fever virus, according to the World Health Organisation.
A recent outbreak of the disease in Uganda has left two people dead, including a five-year-old boy, while nearly 1,400 have died in Congo since August.
The tick was removed from a horse by a vet at The Barn Equine Surgery in Wimborne, Dorset, last September and sent to PHE for analysis.
Kayleigh Hansford, who led the agency’s tick surveillance team, writing in the journal Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases, said:
“This is the first time Hyalomma rufipes has been reported in the United Kingdom.
“The lack of travel by the horse – or any in-contact horses – suggests that this could also be the first evidence of successful moulting of a Hyalomma nymph in the UK.”
She said it is suspected that the tick hitched a ride on a migratory bird before landing in the UK.
Neither the infested horse, nor other horses in the stable had travelled anywhere and no further ticks were detected on any of the horses.
It is thought the tick probably travelled on a swallow because they tend to nest in the stables of horses and migrate from Africa to the UK for summer.
The worrying find could “present a threat to public health in the UK”, the PHE said.
It’s not known whether any more of the ticks have been found in Britain this year, but so far there have been six reported cases in Germany.
Experts in Munich believe the bugs have mutated to survive cold winters – and don’t believe they could have been brought to the country by birds.
Dr Ute Mackenstedt, a parasitologist at the University of Hohenheim, said:
“If the development cycle is taken into account, this cannot be the case here, as the ticks would have had to have been introduced at a time where the migratory birds had not even arrived.
“According to the latest evidence, we have to presume that these animals are able to survive the winters in Germany.”
But he also pointed out that this does not mean that the Hyalomma are home grown.
Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a widespread disease caused by a tick-borne virus.
It’s usually carried by a wide range of wild and domestic animals such as cattle, sheep and goats.
The majority of cases have occurred in people involved in the livestock industry, such as agricultural workers, slaughterhouse workers and veterinarians.
The time between catching the infection and symptoms appearing is usually one to three days.
Onset of symptoms is sudden and can include:
After two to four days, the agitation may be replaced by sleepiness, depression and the stomach pain may have moved.
Other clinical signs include fast heart rate, enlarged lymph nodes and a petechial rash – caused by bleeding into the skin – on internal mucosal surfaces, such as in the mouth and throat, and on the skin.
There is usually evidence of hepatitis, and severely ill patients may experience rapid kidney deterioration, sudden liver failure or pulmonary failure after the fifth day of illness.
Mortality rate is 30 per cent, with death occurring in the second week of illness.
In patients who recover, improvement generally begins on the ninth or tenth day after the onset of illness.
Source: World Health Organisation
Dr Mackenstedt added:
“For the population to expand, a male and a female tick would have to find each other. This is very difficult with such a small number.”
However, five of the Hyalomma ticks were found on a horse at a stables, meaning there is the possibility of a possible pairing – and as a result, the emergence of an independent population.
Last year, German scientists warned about several tropical ticks living in the country – thought to be because of rising temperatures.
Scientists registered a total of seven specimens of the genus Hyalomma in Lower Saxony and Hesse in August 2018.
Meanwhile only two tropical ticks have been found in Germany before, one in 2015 and one in 2017.
The Hyalomma ticks are very noticeable and can grow to as long as 2cm, substantially larger than the local common wood tick.
The massive Hyalomma tick, right, compared to a normal-sized deer tick
Central European News
They are recognised by their unusual size and their striped legs.
Hyalomma originated from Iran or the southern part of the former Soviet Union and spread into Asia, the Middle East, southern Europe, and Africa.
Tick bites can cause a number of diseases which in some cases can be fatal such tick-borne encephalitis and Lyme disease.
Hyalomma species can also carry Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which has already claimed one Brit victim back in 2012.
The 38-year-old man died hours after returning from a wedding in Afghanistan.
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For more on the Monster Tick & CCHF: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/19/monster-ticks-found-in-germany-threaten-europe-with-deadly-disease-crimean-congo-fever/ The one within this link is H. marginatum.
H. rufipes on the UK horse: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/04/11/african-tick-found-on-untraveled-u-k-horse/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/14/crimean-congo-the-asian-ebola-virus/
PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. (WCAX) Ticks are gaining ground in the Adirondacks like never seen before and experts are trying to get the word out.
They want to make sure people living there including visitors and medical providers know how to spot and treat ticks.
Paul Smith’s College tick researcher Lee Ann Sporn helped organize a panel this week — “A Ticking Time Bomb: The Tick Crisis in the Adirondacks” — and is traveling around different parts of the North Country presenting her latest research.
“The lore, the common lore is still that there isn’t ticks and there are no risk of tick borne diseases here in the North Country. Physicians are still failing to treat people with tick bites because they say this is a no risk, or low risk tick borne disease area, which now is really untrue, so we’re really trying to get that word out,” Sporn said.
The best way to protect yourself from ticks includes covering your skin by wearing light and bright colors, use an insecticide like pyrethrin, and do a tick check from head-to-toe when you get home.
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**Comment**
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/04/03/ticks-lyme-are-in-cities-too/
Please watch this video of how ticks were found in the cracks of sidewalks in CA: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/17/video-showing-questing-ticks-in-the-middle-of-the-sidewalk/
Ticks have been found in caves, on rocks, underneath picnic benches, and have fallen from trees onto patios: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/07/ticks-on-beaches/
Ticks found on eyeball, butt, and penis: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/30/ticks-found-on-eyeball-buttocks-and-penis/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/06/19/a-creepy-bed-time-story-from-stephen-king/ (Tick on eye)
Tick in ear had to be surgically removed: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/02/tick-in-boys-ear-had-to-be-surgically-removed/
It’s a good thing they don’t fly. But, they do blow in the wind. Advocates have told me stories of ticks blowing into their swimming pools. My neighbor with a farm field mowed his lawn, blowing the grass toward my house. I found ticks crawling on my basement screens and a few found their way inside the house on the walls.
For far too long patients have been denied diagnosis and treatment based on a piece of paper telling them where ticks are supposed to be.
This is STILL happening as this is being written: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/04/22/its-just-crazy-why-is-lyme-disease-treatment-so-difficult-to-find-in-mississippi/
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 