Most people know that you can catch Lyme disease from the bite of a deer tick. They may also know about other diseases you that ticks can carry, like Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia. But the list of tick-borne illnesses appears to be growing.
One new infection was first identified in New Jersey in 2013. An 80-year-old woman became confused, had difficulty walking, and lost 30 pounds. Doctors found bacteria in her spinal fluid that resembled the spiral-shaped bacterium that causes Lyme. It is called Borrelia miyamotoi.
Imugen, Inc., a testing laboratory in Massachusetts found the bacteria in 97 blood samples in 2013 and 2014; about 1% of the more than 11,500 samples that they tested. They published a study on their results in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
For 51 of these samples, a clinical history of the patient was available. These patients went to their doctor with a high fever, chills, severe headache, and muscle or joint pain. They got better when they were treated with antibiotics and were not known to have any after effects from their illnesses. About a quarter of the patients needed to be hospitalized, but this percentage may be artificially high because blood samples were likely to be tested only on the sickest individuals.
The number of cases of B. miyamotoi that were found in the blood samples was on a par with another tick-borne illness called anaplasmosis.
B. miyamotoi is carried by deer ticks, the same type of ticks that carry Lyme disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis. More research is needed to determine if B. miyamotoi is becoming more common.
In addition to bacterial infections, two tick-borne viruses have been identified in the Midwest, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One, called heartland virus, has been diagnosed in Missouri, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. It is carried by the lone star tick.
The second is called the Bourbon virus and it was identified last year in a man in Bourbon County, KS. A second man in Oklahoma was diagnosed with the virus.
