Lyme Disease – Year Round

Lyme All the Time

Lyme disease is transmitted primarily by ticks, mostly in the spring and summer, but depending upon where you live, ticks can be active year round. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Zajac: I became interested in Lyme disease, particularly because in teaching veterinary students about ticks and fleas and other parasites, I had a contest called the first tick of the season contest.

Ann Zajac is a professor in the veterinary College at Virginia Tech.

Zajac: And I would tell the students in January that I would give an extra credit point to anybody who brought in the first tick that they saw that season. And I would always get in about March a tick that was the most common tick in the area – the American dog tick. And then about 2000, I noticed that I no sooner announced my contest in January, then somebody was bringing me a tick, and it was the deer tick, which previously had not been very numerous. So I think in our region, deer tick really began to explode in its population about 2000.

It’s the aptly named deer tick that’s thought be primary transmitter of Lyme disease to humans.

Zajac: It’s believed that the nymph stage transmits most infections to people, and the nymphs would be most common in the summer time. The adult ticks are quite common in fall and winter months. And in our mountainous area of Virginia, we were able to recover ticks throughout every winter month, as long as temperatures would rise to about 40, we could recover ticks in the environment looking for a host.

I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Lyme Disease - Year Round

Depending upon where you live, disease-carrying ticks can be active year round.
Air Date:01/19/2016
Scientist:
Transcript:

Lyme All the Time

Lyme disease is transmitted primarily by ticks, mostly in the spring and summer, but depending upon where you live, ticks can be active year round. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Zajac: I became interested in Lyme disease, particularly because in teaching veterinary students about ticks and fleas and other parasites, I had a contest called the first tick of the season contest.

Ann Zajac is a professor in the veterinary College at Virginia Tech.

Zajac: And I would tell the students in January that I would give an extra credit point to anybody who brought in the first tick that they saw that season. And I would always get in about March a tick that was the most common tick in the area - the American dog tick. And then about 2000, I noticed that I no sooner announced my contest in January, then somebody was bringing me a tick, and it was the deer tick, which previously had not been very numerous. So I think in our region, deer tick really began to explode in its population about 2000.

It's the aptly named deer tick that's thought be primary transmitter of Lyme disease to humans.

Zajac: It's believed that the nymph stage transmits most infections to people, and the nymphs would be most common in the summer time. The adult ticks are quite common in fall and winter months. And in our mountainous area of Virginia, we were able to recover ticks throughout every winter month, as long as temperatures would rise to about 40, we could recover ticks in the environment looking for a host.

I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.