" The fastest-growing disease of them all is the best known: Lyme. Cases have more than doubled over the past three decades, and each year, nearly half a million people are treated for the disease.
As the blacklegged tick rapidly spreads north, that number is sure to continue rising.
While a promising Lyme vaccine is in development, it won’t stop the blacklegged tick from potentially giving us other diseases, such as the flulike anaplasmosis or the rare but sometimes fatal Powassan virus, which can cause inflammation of the brain.
The rates of babesiosis, a red blood cell-destroying disease that can lead to organ failure if left untreated, are also on the rise. One researcher has called it “the malaria of developed New England.”
Posted by Ann-Ohio (Member # 44364) on :
"The lone star tick, especially, seems as if it crawled out of a horror flick.
With its aggressive approach to hunting and unusually long, barbed mouthparts designed to anchor into our flesh, it resembles a miniature version of the alien in the “Predator” movies.
Unlike most other ticks, which take a let’s-see-what-comes-along approach, the lone star will pursue you for several yards.
It’s fast, able to crawl up a leg in seconds and is one of the relatively few tick species whose larvae bite humans:
Step on a cluster of lone star babies and you will soon find hundreds of poppy-seed-size vampires coating your ankle. They can even push through your socks.
Posted by Ann-Ohio (Member # 44364) on :
"The blacklegged and lone star ticks have been in North America at least since the ice sheets retreated 20,000 years ago,
their populations waxing and waning with changes in the climate and the abundance of deer, their favored host.
The first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder described ticks as “the foulest and nastiest creatures that be.”
Maybe another subconscious reason we hate ticks so much is that they take us down a peg. They remind us that we, too, are prey — just another blood meal."
Posted by hiker53 (Member # 6046) on :
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