Lyme Disease and Tick Bites

It is spring and the flowers, black flies and ticks are blooming! Flowers and black flies rarely cause significant health problems, but deer ticks can. They can transmit Lyme disease by transmitting Lyme bacteria when they attach to their victim. They can also transmit the rarer diseases called ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and, even more rarely, tularemia and Lyme variants, recently reported to cause a dementing illness especially in the elderly. Our region used to be on the edge of the deer tick/Lyme disease infestation area, which was the southern New England states and southern Maine. But with long term warming and less winter kill of ticks, the population has increased substantially so that it is now much more common to see tick bites and consequently increased Lyme disease incidence.