Month: May 2020

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, the rapidly growing number of cases is alarming—largely because many are stymied by its origins. COVID-19 is an exampleof zoonosis: a disease or infection that is transmitted to humans from animals. COVID-19 is the name of thespecific illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The exact origins of COVID-19 are not yet clearly understood, but the first outbreak of cases have been associated with alive animal market in Wuhan, China. It is thought that this particular coronavirus originated in bats who then infected the live animals sold in the market. The leap from animal to human was thought to have occurred because of humans’ close exposure to the animals in the market; but which exact animals were the source, and whether humans inhaled, ...

Summer is field season for ecologists like me, a time when my colleagues, students and I go out into fields and woods in search of ticks to study the patterns and processes that allow disease-causing microbes — primarily bacteria and viruses — to spread among wildlife and humans. That field work means we’re also at risk of getting the very diseases we study. I always remind my crew members to pay close attention to their health. If they get a fever or any other signs of sickness, they should seek medical treatment immediately and tell their doctor that they may have been exposed to ticks. When summer flu-like illnesses develop in anyone who spends time outdoors in areas where ticks are common, tick-transmitted diseases like Lyme disease should be considered a likely culprit. This summer,...

As if we all needed another health concern, Lyme disease season has arrived.A walk in the woods might be an appealing way to relieve stress from the coronavirus lockdown, but it comes with an underappreciated risk: Ticks that carry Lyme and other illnesses.Some of the basic symptoms of a Lyme infection — fever, malaise, fatigue — can resemble Covid-19. That’s a worry nobody needs. In addition, contracting a serious illness like Lyme could put you at greater risk from Covid.“We already know people with underlying conditions are more vulnerable for complications with coronavirus,” said Shannon L. Delaney, a neuropsychiatrist and director of child and adolescent evaluation at Columbia University’s Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center. “Certainly, people with tick-borne illness fall i...

Tick season is heating up in the Adirondacks, and while most people are focused on not contracting COVID-19 right now, local physicians, infectious disease experts and tick-borne illness experts are worried people may forget that another danger lurks in the woods. Tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease, babesiosis or anaplasmosis have symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19: fever, weariness and a nondescript unwellness. These diseases do not, however, include a cough, like COVID-19 does. “Providers will now have to consider tick-borne disease and COVID if patients present with an isolated fever,” Elizabeth Rogers, a spokeswoman for Elizabethtown Community Hospital wrote in an email. “The dynamics change with the season,” ECH’s Director of Primary Care Dr. Rob Demuro wrote in an e...

Her symptoms started quickly: neck pain, extreme fatigue and intermittent fever and chills. The woman had been healthy until then, and since she enjoyed gardening and landscaping at her rural Maryland home, she wondered if a tick bite might have given her Lyme disease although she had not noticed the telltale bull’s-eye skin lesion. Her doctor told her it was likely just a virus. The next day, she felt worse and went to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with mononucleosis. The woman, a nurse in her 40s, returned to the emergency room a few weeks later with breathing trouble and low blood pressure. Doctors tested her for Lyme disease and found it had spread to her heart, a rare manifestation of Lyme disease that can be fatal. Antibiotics resolved her heart and respiratory symptom...

By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews  The Office of Rospotrebnadzor in the Moscow Region reported Monday on tick activity in the region (computer translated). As of May 14, 2020, 1,417 people went to health providers in the Moscow Region for medical assistance regarding tick bite cases, 518 of them were children. For the same period in 2019, 3731 complaints were registered, including 1135 among children. Ixodes scapularis, a Black-legged tick/CDC For prophylactic purposes, people traveling to tick-borne viral encephalitis endemic areas, as well as people at occupational risk groups working in natural biotopes, are vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis. As of 05/14/2020, 1,119 people were vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis, including 326 children. The resu...