When Maine is in the throes of tick season, huge bags of the eight-legged bugs arrive for testing at a Maine Medical Center lab in South Portland.
Most of the specimens are squashed, ripped apart or burned, evidence of their victims’ efforts to remove the tiny arachnids after a bite.
“It looks like people have taken a blowtorch to them to get them off,” said Charles Lubelczyk, field biologist at the MMC Research Institute’s Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory.
The samples come in baby food jars, contact lens cases, zip-lock bags and all manner of containers.
Many people who send ticks to the lab for testing are worried about disease, but the lab’s researchers do not test submitted bugs for Lyme disease or other illnesses. No lab in Maine does, including the state lab overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services that performs rabies and lead testing.
For those who want a tick checked for disease, and are willing to pay, the closest options are the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Connecticut. The UMass testing program charges $40 per sample, while the UConn lab charges $50 to $100.
MMC’s lab, at no cost, identifies the species of tick — there are 15 in Maine — and determines how long a tick was attached to its host based on the amount of blood in its tiny body.
Both pieces of information are useful in determining whether someone is likely to get sick from a tick bite. While some species don’t pose a risk to human health, the deer tick, which is spreading farther north into Maine, is known to transmit Lyme disease as well as two other illnesses emerging in the state: anaplasmosis and babesiosis.
In areas where the deer tick is more prevalent, such as York and Cumberland counties, up to 70 percent are estimated to carry disease, Lubelczyk said. The infection rate is about 40 percent in the Bangor area. It drops further in Aroostook County and Down East, but submissions from those regions are increasing, he said.
No matter where you are in the state, “the potential for infected ticks is going to be out there,” Lubelczyk said.
Deer ticks carrying disease must be attached for 36 to 48 hours to spread illness through a bite, he said.
Even then, the tick may or may not actually make you sick, according to Dr. Stephen Sears, state epidemiologist. Testing can tell you whether the tick that bit you carries an illness-causing organism, but not whether you’ve been exposed to the disease, he said.
“Even though a tick may be infected, it does not always transmit disease,” Sears said.
If you’re bitten by a deer tick that clings to your body for at least 24 hours and is engorged with blood, health practitioners assume the potential for disease, he said. Doctors may recommend a dose of antibiotics and patients must monitor themselves for symptoms for about a month, he said.
Health practitioners do not, however, recommend the blowtorch approach to tick removal. If you spot an embedded tick, use tweezers to grasp its mouth and pull it out with steady pressure. Don’t use petroleum jelly, hot matches or nail polish remover, which can increase the risk of infection.
MMC’s lab typically tests 1,000-1,600 ticks a year, Lubelczyk said. Submissions come from state and federal agencies, doctors, veterinarians and the public.
The lab would need a clinical certification to test submitted ticks for disease, he said. But its researchers will collect tick samples from the field, such as at state parks, and test them for pathogens that cause illness. That’s how the lab comes up with its estimates about the number of ticks in a given area and how many carry disease, Lubelczyk said.
The lab also conducts research into illnesses carried by mosquitoes, such as West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis.
For ticks, the lab generates a report identifying the species and engorgement level within a couple of days.
Then the tick goes into storage, joining the lab’s racks and racks of specimens dating back to the 1990s, Lubelczyk said. Researchers hold onto the little bloodsuckers just in case further testing is needed down the road.
“All the deer ticks that come through the door we do hold on to,” he said.
For information about submitting a tick to the Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory, visit www.mmcri.org.
http://goo.gl/ydt68
You only know which pathogens are present if you know what to test for and no one seems to understand that viruses, bacteria, protozoans and other parasites are being transmitted. There are so many kinds of each pathogen as well and the pathogens that were traditionally found in one geographic area have spread far and wide to others. The problem is that most people do not get or see a bulls eye rash (EM) and wind up going years without a proper diagnosis, and then their immune systems are so compromised that they do not build enough antibodies to Borrelial antigens to test positively, not to mention that many of the specific antigens are not used because they were used to develop a vaccine. I do not know of one person who only tests positively for Borrelia and in fact have many other infections wreaking havoc. Known and agreed to chronic infections of Chlamydias, Mycoplasmas, Brucella and Q fever are part and parcel of the injected toxic soup. Yale was trying to develop a vaccine to stop the tick from salivating and regurgitating the contents of its mid gut so that the myriad of pathogens would not be inserted into the host. That is a much better idea than trying to vaccinate for Borrelia, Babesial species, Bartonella, Brucella, Tularemia, Q fever, Powassan virus, Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus, Deer Tick virus (cousin of Powassan) and God knows what else. These pathogens turn on the latent EBV virus in B lymphocytes so that lyme patients are now battling the latent viruses in their systems as well as the new one injected. Lyme patients are showing up with all the opportunistic infections that we see in HIV/AIDS patients. Something needs to be done to spread awareness and garner some much needed research. Useless guidelines that do not address the whole picture should be thrown out and veterinary and medical researchers should work together to understand the complexity of these zoonotic infections and come up with some excellent treatments. This is an epidemic ! and one that is currently being shoved under the rug and will take down the best and brightest in our society.
To complicate the treatment picture, each one of the pathogens require differing medications. Babesia divergens, versus, microti or duncani for instance may not all be eradicated by the same treatment protocol and many are becoming resistant to the ones currently in use. Species in Europe may need other medications and those pathogens may not test positively on the lab testing in America and vice versa. All of this information is being ignored and I have not even mentioned the whole biofilm, cystic forms and persistence of Borrelia or the fact that our blood supply is not being tested for any of these pathogens. American Red Cross says there isn’t a good test for Babesia.
The rule of thumb is that if you see deer, watch out for deer ticks which infect us with not only Lyme disease but also babesiosis and anaplasmosis, both of which can be fatal. Areas in Maine where deer are dense have a higher incidence of these diseases than areas where deer are scarce. Hunters want to build up deer herds to make hunting easier but in so doing, they increase the incidence of Lyme disease which can result in crippling arthritis, brain damage and other horrific symptoms. Of course hunting is big business, but tourism is even bigger business, and no one wants to vacation where there’s a good chance that a poppy-seed-sized tick can ruin your life. Hunters should be used to bring down the deer population in deer-dense areas. Cornell wildlife expert Paul Curtis states that deer should be reduced to 6-8 per square mile to bring down the ticks to a reasonable level.