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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report saying that Cases of a tick-borne disease called babesiosis more than doubled in some Northeastern states between 2011 and 2019.
The agency said that for decades this disease was extremely rare in the United States, now it is endemic in 10 states in the Northeast and Midwest.
Experts believe that this increase may have been driven by rising temperatures and growing deer populationstwo factors that help ticks proliferate.
“I think this is an unfortunate milestone,” said Dr. Peter Krause, a babesiosis expert at the Yale School of Public Health, reviewing the New York Times.
The first person known to have been infected in the United States was reported in 1969 in Massachusetts. Nowadays, most cases occur in the Northeast and Upper Midwest during the spring and summer.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends testing donated blood in certain states because the parasite can also be transmitted by blood transfusions.
Ticks are known to prefer warm, humid conditions and have expanded their range northward, thus highlighting the need for expanded surveillance and detection of the disease.
symptoms of babesiosis
Although many people with babesiosis are asymptomatic, others develop flu-like symptoms:
- Fever
- Shaking chills
- sweats
- Muscle pains
The disease can be serious or fatal in people who have compromised immune systems or other risk factors.
Babesiosis is caused by parasites normally found at home in mice and other rodents. and they can transmit the disease to humans in a variety of ways.
Black-legged ticks the size of a poppy seed, which are also known as deer ticks, can transmit Lyme disease.
Some experts believe that the construction of new houses in areas where there are ticks, could also play a fundamental role in the increase of infections.
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