In Maine, 20-Fold Increase In Lyme Disease 2000-2016 As Warming Pushes Deer Ticks North

[hatrack]

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Maine is home to 15 tick species but only one public-health menace: the blacklegged tick — called the “deer” tick — a carrier of Lyme and other debilitating diseases. For 30 years, an army of deer ticks has advanced from the state’s southwest corner some 350 miles to the Canadian border, infesting towns such as Houlton, Limestone and Presque Isle. “It’s horrifying,” says Dora Mills, director of the Center for Excellence in Health Innovation at the University of New England in Portland. Mills, 68, says she never saw deer ticks in her native state until 2000.

The ticks have brought a surge of Lyme disease in Maine over two decades, boosting reported cases from 71 in 2000 to 1,487 in 2016 — a 20-fold increase, the latest federal data show. Today, Maine leads the nation in Lyme incidence, topping hot spots like Connecticut, New Jersey and Wisconsin. Deer-tick illnesses such as anaplasmosis and babesiosis — a bacterial infection and a parasitic disease similar to malaria, respectively — are following a similar trajectory.

The explosion of disease correlates with a warming climate in Maine where, over the past three decades, summers generally have grown hotter and longer and winters milder and shorter.

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Yet in Maine, Gov. Paul LePage — a conservative Republican who has questioned global-warming science — won’t acknowledge the phenomenon. His administration has suppressed state plans and vetoed legislation aimed at limiting the damage, former government officials say. They say state employees, including at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, have been told not to discuss climate change. “It appears the problem has been swept under the rug,” says Mills, who headed the Maine CDC from 1996 to 2011. In the 2000s, she sat on a government task force charged with developing plans to respond to climate change; those efforts evidently went for naught. “We all know this response of ignoring it and hoping it goes away,” she says. “But it never goes away.”

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https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/08/06/21999/disease-bearing-ticks-head-north-weak-government-response-threatens-public-health

[JenniferJuniper]

1. If you don't catch a Lyme infection early

You stand a chance of becoming very seriously ill.

I'm not sure where I got Lyme this spring or early summer - Maine, Massachusetts or even possibly London - but I had no early warning signs and am still on antibiotics and still have terrible joint pain.

I'm an not an outdoors person. I wasn't in any wooded areas. I could have only gotten bitten walking across a well-trimmed lawn. If I got it, anyone can.

Check for ticks anytime you are outside. They are the size of poppy seeds. Even if you don't see a classic bulls-eye rash, if you come down with a "summer flu" with no respiratory symptoms insist on being treated for Lyme. My tests were positive because I'd had it for weeks already but the tests aren't great and false negatives are likely during the first stage of Lyme.

[Nay]

3. I was very lucky because I developed the telltale bullseye rash. I was treated with

Cipro and have had no aftereffects from being infected. I DID remember that I had removed a tick from the rash area, so it was pretty obvious I was infected, but not everyone is so lucky to get the rash.

[JenniferJuniper]

4. About 30% of people don't see a tick or a rash.

I didn't see either and didn't get diagnosed until about 6 - 7 weeks after bite when I broke out in a circular rash all over my body which indicated a disseminated infection throughout my body. I am still suffering from some serious after-effects that I'm hoping will eventually go away.

Can't stress enough - if you think you have the "flu" in the summer and live in an area where Lyme is becoming epidemic, make sure you are treated for Lyme, bullseye or not. My doctor refused to give me antibiotics when I first sought his help for a very strange "flu". "Drink lots of fluids" was the only recommendation. I should have been treated three weeks earlier than I was.

[Nay]

6. Oh, I know. That's why I said I was lucky. I have friends who never had the bullseye rash

and they suffered the complications you suffered. My condolences!

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I'm in Maine. Very angry about the influx of ticks, but

even angrier at our pathetic excuse for a governor.

[jpak]

5. I never saw a tick in Maine until the year 2000

They used to be a "southern thing".

Give me black flies any day....