More ticks in more places

At Harvard University's Center for the Environment, Dr. Thomas Mather spoke about "More Ticks in More Places" and addressed the occurrences of Lyme disease and related tick-transmitted illnesses and how they have reached epic proportions this year.

One-fourth of nymphal ticks are carrying pathogens that can make you sick and when those ticks become adults they are twice as likely to transmit diseases.

Lyme disease is usually contracted through a tick bite with early symptoms that include fever and aches and a rash. Long-term symptoms can be more serious, including heart problems and severe joint pain.

Leah Mishkin, an undergraduate student, described her experience with the disease as a young child as what felt like a horrible flu. She said, "It took forever for the symptoms to go away."

Mather, a professor at the University of Rhode Island and director of the Center for Vector-Borne Disease provided his audience with numerous reasons for the increase in tick prevalence in the Northeast, which included an increased number of homes in tick habitats as well as an increased number of reproductive hosts for ticks due to government crackdown on hunting.

Mather explained that changes in both forest management and land use have also contributed to an increase of 52 percent in the Northeast since 2010.

He explained "the tick game has changed. I'm going to argue that we have this new tick and it's got different things going on and with the new tick we need new rules." Mather boiled this down to a number of things he thought everyone needed to know about ticks these days. He explained to a shocked audience that ticks could be active even in the winter, although most Lyme disease cases occur between June and August.

Through his own research, Mather explained that there is something we can all be hopeful for: nature's cycles have been known to kill deer ticks. With a research team, he looked at relative humidity in tick habitat and discovered that if ticks were exposed to humidity below 80 percent for more than eight hours straight, they could not survive. In this way, nature has its own way of curbing the spread of disease-carrying ticks.

Mather explained that duck tape works well to remove the insect unless they have embedded themselves into a person's skin. In this case, he suggested a set of pointy tweezers is easiest and safest but reminded audience members to grab the tick at its head to ensure pathogens don't get squeezed into the skin. To prevent Lyme disease, an individual has at least 24 hours to find and remove a feeding tick before it transmits an infection.

Mather told the audience that tick bites and tick-borne diseases are preventable. He said, "You can protect yourself…you can wear clothes with built-in tick repellent, you can make sure that your pet also has this personal tick bite protection and then you can wait around for us to invent this anti-tick vaccine."

Mather has created TickEncounter.org, a website powered by ABC and created to answer all types of questions related to types of ticks and Lyme disease in a user-friendly atmosphere. He is also working on an anti-feeding and transmission block vaccine, which targets the saliva of the tick. His plan is to develop a "Tick Bite Patch," something that will ultimately destroy the tick on contact. He said it should be ready to market within five years.