Deer ticks know how to travel.
The tiny hitchhikers have jumped aboard birds, rats, mice, humans
and, of course, deer on their relentless 30-year journey north and
east into every county in Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Now,
bites from infected deer ticks are causing between 900 and 1,000
people in Maine to be diagnosed with Lyme disease every year.
If youve got the ticks, the deer and the mice, youre going to
have the potential setup for Lyme, said Maine epidemiologist Dr.
Stephen Sears.
The disease causes symptoms such as fatigue, headache, joint
soreness, arthritis, neurological problems, heart problems and
memory problems in sufferers.
Sears expects even more Mainers to become sickened in coming
years. A map provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control
shows how Lyme is spreading across the eastern seaboard and the
upper Midwest. A thick band of blue dots indicating confirmed cases
of the disease covers Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and
New Jersey. The thick band extends north only as far as midcoast
Maine, with the rest of the state speckled with just a few blue
dots. That potential for growth is one reason why Sears and the
Maine Center for Disease Control are treating Lyme as a preventable
disease, with heavy emphasis on public education.
What can you do to know about Lyme disease and to prevent getting
ticks? he said. Its always better to prevent than to treat.
Prevention
Experts say that common-sense tactics can help most people avoid
getting bitten by ticks. Or, if theyre bitten, to more quickly seek
treatment, as the sooner Lyme disease is treated, the easier it is
to treat.
Meryl Nass, a physician with Mount Desert Island Hospital, had
some tips for keeping safe. She said pesticides with 20 percent DEET
are relatively effective against ticks, adding that some newer, less
toxic pesticides also can work.
Nass sprays the bottoms of her pants and her shoes with pesticide
before going hiking, avoids low-hanging branches and stays on the
trails. Pulling socks over pants also helps, and hikers should
always do a tick check after going outside.
But she cautioned against letting fear of Lyme disease deter
people from getting fresh air, sunshine and exercise.
The best thing for people is to be pretty careful and to be
careful enough so they wont be worried about it, she said. We
shouldnt allow it to influence our lives; we should just be prudent.
Jim Dill, a pest management specialist with the University of
Maine Cooperative Extension, said he takes special care in the wood-
grass interface where ticks are usually found. People can sweep
their backyards for ticks by taking an old, fuzzy light-colored wool
blanket and making it into a tick drag.
You put it on a stick and drag that blanket in areas where kids
are going to play, or in places where ticks will be, he said.
But since ticks move around, people must keep dragging for them.
Pesticides are a longer-lasting tick deterrent, and Dill recommended
going to a local hardware store and asking for a yard-type
pesticide.
It is a terrible disease, he said of Lyme.
Northern progress
When Dill was a boy playing in the central Maine woods years ago,
he never had a tick on him. Back then, deer dicks were in such low
numbers in the state they were practically nonexistent.
Now, deer ticks are moving north, he said.
Reasons for that include the fact that there are more deer in
Maine and the general warming of the climate, which is better for
ticks, Dill said.
But ticks dont thrive in hot, dry conditions, as Maine had for
much of last summer. According to the Maine CDC, which tracks
confirmed cases of Lyme disease by county, there were 734 cases in
Maine in 2010. There were nearly 1,000 cases the previous summer,
which was notably wetter. While every county in the state has had
confirmed cases, the numbers are much higher in the southwestern and
midcoast counties and much lower in counties like Piscataquis,
Aroostook, Somerset, Penobscot and Washington.
Scientists at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in
South Portland are working to track the tick migration.
Susan Elias, a research associate at the institutes Vector-borne
Disease Laboratory, said that researchers have been busy going into
different towns and flagging for ticks during the first year of a
climate-change study that has been funded by the federal Centers for
Disease Control.
The CDC is charged to look at how public health is affected by
various examples of climate change, she said. You might have more
heat waves, more heavy rainfall events, more variability. How will
these factors affect public health? How will we expect increased
heat or variability or rainfall to have an affect on tick abundance
or tick range?
A report based on research from the studys first year should be
completed later this fall, she said.
For more information about Lyme disease, please visit the website
www.cdc.gov/lyme.
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