From news out of Washington to what's happening in your own backyard, it's tick season and
it started early this year.
Also health officials are keeping an eye on dangerous and not well known tick-borne diseases.
We turn to the Department of Health Services and Public Health Entomologist, C.A.L.E.
Dr. Lee, thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me on the show.
So even though spring has really just sprung, our ticks are already out in some force.
Yeah, although it feels like it just started for us, the ticks have been out since middle
of March and we do a lot of work around the state and what we see is that they are out
and they are abundant in some locations.
They are numerous.
Is this a harpinger that the ticks season will be bad this year?
Sometimes we do see that but we do have a lot of work and surveillance that we do across
the state of Wisconsin and what we're seeing right now are tick numbers that are fairly
similar to what we normally see in an average year and considering the forecast for the
summer, I think we're expecting a fairly average and normal year for tick season.
Okay, how does Wisconsin compare to other states when it comes to number of ticks that
we encounter?
Yeah, so Wisconsin is considered one of the top 10 states of the highest rates of tick
borne diseases and so we do have quite a number of ticks in Wisconsin.
There are other states that have a lot more but I think we are definitely up there in
terms of the top five, top 10.
Three types of ticks in habit Wisconsin I understand but nearly all illnesses spread
by ticks are caused by the deer tick according to DHS.
One such illness we know about is Lyme disease, really well known.
How common is that?
Yeah, so Lyme disease is one of the most commonly reported vector borne disease in the United
States.
In fact, it is the most kind of vector borne reported, reported vector borne disease in
the United States.
When you think about how common it is, we often think about how common it is in the
ticks that we find out in the environment and so this time of the year, when the ticks
are active, we normally see the adult ticks and a lot of the research and studies that
have been conducted in those ticks that are in the environment, when you collect them
and you test them for the pathogen that caused Lyme disease, we see about 40 to 50% of those
adult ticks have that pathogen and now when we get into the summer months, that shifts
a little bit and we get the juvenile life stages that become active and that life stage we
typically see about 15 to 20% of those ticks being infected with that pathogen that can
cause Lyme disease.
So that's bad enough but there are these other illnesses including something called alpha
gal syndrome and Powassan, the latter of which is more common in Northern Wisconsin,
I understand what is Powassan and how dangerous is it?
Yeah, so Powassan virus disease is a disease that can be transmitted by, again, the black
legatec or the deer tick and it can be very fatal in some cases, you know, there are some
cases where people can develop severe symptoms such as encephalitis and in rare cases, people
can die from this as well.
But for the most part, when we think about how common or how common this pathogen is
in the environment, again, we go back to sort of thinking about how common this pathogen
is and the ticks that can potentially bite us and so when we think about that and we
do the testing and we look at the studies that have sort of, you know, pole the ticks
from the environment, test them for this pathogen, what we see is that the number of ticks that
are infected with this pathogen that is about, you know, 1% or less than that so it's fairly
uncommon in the ticks that are all in the environment and it's fairly uncommon in the
sense that we just don't see a lot of it in the environment.
And what about alpha-gal syndrome?
How common is that and what is it?
Yeah, so alpha-gal syndrome is a hypersensitivity to red meat.
It's a allergic reaction to red meat and this is caused by a bite from a lone star tick.
Now in Wisconsin, we don't have a lot of the lone star tick.
In fact, we don't have it labeled as a tick that is commonly found.
It's not native to Wisconsin, it's invading from the southern parts of the United States.
We do get reported cases of alpha-gal from across the state and we do get reported ticks
from across Wisconsin as well but none of that suggests that the tick is firmly here
in Wisconsin.
That tick may come in through an animal such as a bird or a traveler or something like
a deer but for the most part it's not, the tick is not here in Wisconsin and so we don't
expect a lot of cases of alpha-gal syndrome in Wisconsin but we do like, you know, like
the data shows, we do see it pop up once and again because of the fact that the lone star
tick can be found randomly throughout the state either through other animals that have brought
it in or through other avenues.
Good to know that those last two kind of tick-borne diseases are rare but what should
people do to best prevent tick bites?
Yeah, so tick bites are entirely preventable.
You want to make sure that people have the best health outcome and some of the easiest
things that you can do that are cause-effective is just check yourself, check yourself or tick.
You go outside, you go into the woods, you go on a hike, just remind yourself to stop
every 15 minutes and check yourself for ticks.
When you're done with that and you come out of the woods, check yourself for ticks.
When you get home and easy thing to do is just to take off any of the clothes that you
head on and throw that into your dryer, run it on high for about 10-15 minutes and that
should create enough heat to kill any ticks that were on your clothes.
Take a shower and of course do a thorough tick check before you take a shower, taking
a shower can help to remove any ticks that have not been attached to you and of course
one other thing that you can do while you're out there is to use bug spray, you know, if
you use bug spray and target yourself in the regions where the tick might grab onto you,
it's a good way to just repel them and keep them off of you and keep you safe.
Alright, Dr. Zia Lee, thank you very much for your information.
Thank you.
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSWIS.org and then click
on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freiberg.
Have a good weekend.
Yeah, so I really like insects and I really like helping people too.