Frederica Freyberg:
From news out of Washington to what’s happening in your own backyard. It’s tick season and it started early this year. Also, health officials are keeping an eye on dangerous and not well-known tick-borne diseases. We turn to the Department of Health Services and Public Health, entomologist Xia Lee. And Dr. Lee, thanks very much for being here.

Xia Lee:
Thank you for having me on the show.

Frederica Freyberg:
So even though spring has really just sprung, are ticks already out in some force?

Xia Lee:
Yeah. Although it feels like spring just started for us, the ticks have been out since middle of March and we do a lot of work around the state, and what we see is that they are out and they are abundant. In some locations, they are numerous.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is this a harbinger that the tick season will be bad this year?

Xia Lee
Sometimes we do see that, but we do have a lot of work and surveillance that we do across the state of Wisconsin. And what we’re seeing right now are tick numbers that are fairly similar to what we normally see in an average year. And considering the forecast for this summer, I think we’re expecting a fairly average and normal year for tick season.

Frederica Freyberg:
How does Wisconsin compare to other states when it comes to number of ticks that we encounter?

Xia Lee:
Yeah. So Wisconsin is considered one of the top ten states with the highest rates of tick-borne diseases. And so we do have quite a number of ticks in Wisconsin. There are other states that have a lot more, but I think we are definitely up there in terms of the, you know, the top five, top ten.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, three types of ticks inhabit Wisconsin, I understand, but nearly all illnesses spread by ticks are caused by the deer tick, according to DHS. One such illness we know about is Lyme disease, really well known. How common is that?

Xia Lee:
Yeah. So Lyme disease is one of the most commonly reported vector borne disease in the United States. In fact, it is the most common vector-borne reported — reported vector-borne disease in the United States. Now, when we think about how common it is, we often think about how common it is in the ticks that we find out in the environment. And so this time of the year when the ticks are active, we normally see the adult ticks. And a lot of the research and studies that have been conducted in those ticks are in the environment. When you collect them and you test them for the pathogen that causes Lyme disease, we see about 40% to 50% of those adult ticks have that pathogen. And now when we get into the summer months, that shifts a little bit and we get the juvenile life stages that become active. In that life stage, we typically see about 15% to 20% of those ticks being infected with that pathogen that can cause Lyme disease.

Frederica Freyberg:
So that’s bad enough but there are these other illnesses, including something called Alpha-gal syndrome and Powassan, the latter of which is more common in northern Wisconsin I understand. What is Powassan and how dangerous is it?

Xia Lee:
Yeah. So Powassan virus disease is a disease that can be transmitted by, again, the blacklegged tick or the deer tick, and it can be very fatal in some cases. You know, there are some cases where people can develop severe symptoms such as encephalitis. And then in rare cases, people can die from this as well. But for the most part, when we think about how common or uncommon this pathogen is in the environment, again, we go back to sort of thinking about how common this pathogen is in the ticks that could potentially bite us. And so when we think about that and we do the testing and we look at the studies that have sort of, you know, pull the ticks from the environment, test them for this pathogen, what we see is that the number of ticks that are infected with this pathogen, is about 1% or less than that. So it’s fairly uncommon in the ticks that are out in the environment. And it’s fairly uncommon in the sense that we just don’t see a lot of it in the environment.

Frederica Freyberg:
What should people do to best prevent tick bites?

Xia Lee:
Yeah. So tick bites are entirely preventable. Some of the easiest things that you can do that are cost effective is just check yourself for ticks. You go outside, you go into the woods, you go on a hike. Just remind yourself to stop every 15 minutes and check yourself for ticks. When you’re done with that and you come out of the woods, check yourself for ticks. When you get home, an easy thing to do is to take off any of the clothes that you had on and throw that into your dryer. Run it on high for about 10 – 15 minutes and that should create enough heat to kill any ticks that were on your clothes. Take a shower, and of course, do a thorough tick check before you take a shower. Taking a shower can help to remove any ticks that have not been attached to you, and of course, one other thing that you can do while you’re out there is to use bug spray. You know, if you use bug spray and target yourself in the regions where the tick might grab onto you, it’s a good way to just repel them and keep them off of you and keep you safe.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right, Dr. Xia Lee, thank you very much for your information.

Xia Lee:
Thank you.