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"Beyond Lyme: New Tick-Borne Diseases On The Rise In U.S."
(NPR, 3/11/2017)
See this story broadcast on ATC over the weekend.*
The scariest disease in the collection is caused by Powassan virus (named after Powassan, ON). There is also a relatively new disease (in the northeastern U.S.) with similar manifestations to Lyme disease that is caused by a different bacterium in the Borrelia genus. It is also transmitted by deer ticks, but does not usually produce the "bull's-eye" rash characteristic of the onset of Lyme disease.
I hadn’t realized that mice, especially white-footed mice, play a key role in disease propagation in the Northeast because they can transmit disease to ticks, whereas deer cannot, although a single deer can host thousands of ticks. The ATC story describes a strategy for applying a tick insecticide to mice in the wild that is now being tested in New York (in the upper Hudson Valley).
(* There is more context in this story from 2/7/2017.)
