『Tick-borne illnesses on the rise across all of Long Island』のカバーアート

Tick-borne illnesses on the rise across all of Long Island

Tick-borne illnesses on the rise across all of Long Island

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今ならプレミアムプランが3カ月 月額99円

2026年5月12日まで。4か月目以降は月額1,500円で自動更新します。

概要

 Since the early 1980s, Long Island has become a hotbed for ticks and an epicenter for the diseases they can carry, such as Lyme disease, babesiosis and more recently, alpha-gal syndrome, the meat allergy sparked by a tick bite. Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that predicting whether this will be a "bad" tick year is difficult because population is driven by factors such as weather, vegetation and availability of hosts — such as deer and mice — to feed on, said Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist.Every year, he oversees tick surveillance in Suffolk to see which species are in the environment and which pathogens they are carrying."I’ve never seen a shortage of ticks," Campbell said. "You still have to take precautions whether you are in contact with one tick or 100 ticks."But there are some signs it will be a busy seasonSnow, blanketed Long Island this winter, can insulate ticks from cold temperatures."The question is always, 'It's been a terrible winter — will there be fewer ticks?' " entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann told members of the Adirondacks Club's Long Island Chapter at a meeting this month. "We were snow covered for a whole month at least. That means the ticks and all the insects that are under the snow are buffered from the very cold."Ticks can be active when the temperatures are about 37 degrees or higher. They are less likely to survive in dry conditions, whether they are extremely hot or cold.Gangloff-Kaufmann said an abundant acorn season, called an "acorn mast," two years ago may also foretell a tough tick season because it can lead to a burst in the mouse and chipmunk population. Mice are a common reservoir for disease.7:06am - 7:07:30amAre tick-borne illnesses going up?"The trends are up for everything you measure," said Nicole Baumgarth, director of the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "The question is whether [tick-borne diseases] are being diagnosed more, or are they more prevalent?" Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that emergency department visits for tick bites have been rising. For the most recent week in April available, 168 out of every 100,000 visits to emergency departments in the Northeast were for a tick bite, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the same week last year it was 107 out of every 100,000 visits.Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic in Hampton Bays has received a steady stream of calls and appointment requests over the last two weeks."We're starting to see more tick activity and more tick bites," said Dr. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stony Brook Children's Hospital who has a focus on tick-borne illnesses. "I expect in the coming weeks to start seeing cases of tick-borne diseases."Researchers in the United States and Australia spent years piecing together the mystery of why some people were developing an allergy to meat. Scientists at the University of Virginia found a "range of evidence" by 2010 to link it to the bite of a lone star tick, and specifically a sugar molecule in the tick's saliva that can cause an overactive immune response.Dr. Erin McGintee, an allergist and immunologist at ENT and Allergy Associates in Southampton, started diagnosing cases on Long Island around 2011 and has treated more than 1,000 patients with the allergy since that time.McGintee, an alpha-gal expert, said cases were once more common on the East End of Long Island but now show up in patients from various places including Port Jefferson, Islip, Stony Brook and Smithtown."It's following where the deer are going and the lone star tick is spreading," she said. Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that wildlife experts believe much of Suffolk County’s large tick population can be attributed to the warming climate and a growing wildlife population, in particular white-tail deer that provide a food source and mode of transportation for ticks.The region's deer population, almost wiped out at the start of the 20th century due to over hunting and other issues, rebounded in recent decades due to conservation efforts and the lack of natural predators."The deer population on Long Island exploded," said entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, associate director at Cornell’s Integrated Pest Management program. She is based in Babylon.Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist, said the deer on Long Island are moving westward as their numbers grow and they search for food."Decades ago, people in Huntington, Smithtown, Islip didn’t have problems with ticks," said Campbell. There's less food for deer in forests, so they "come into residential areas to feed on the arborvitae or plantings in our yards and they bring those ticks with them."If you do have a tick bite, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic recommends taking a photo of it, ...
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