Grace Mills, 18 of Valparaiso, battled Lyme disease and knows all too well the effects of a tick bite.
“I started getting sick in the summer of 2018, but we are not completely sure when and where I
actually got bit,” said Mills. “I do live in a wooded area and I had gone to a forested area multiple times that year for school field trips, but we are not entirely sure.”
Ticks, and resulting Lyme disease, may be on the increase for an assortment of reasons, said Phurchhoki Sherpa, the medical entomology program coordinator at Purdue.
“In recent years, we have been having milder winters,” said Sherpa. “Milder winters mean more ticks survive through the year.”
Development also plays a role.
“We humans have encroached closer to wooded areas and wildlife, increasing our encounters
with ticks,” said Sherpa. “Leaving piles of trash or woodpiles around residential areas also
encourages mice and other rodents to get closer to human settlements, and rodents are great hosts for ticks and reservoirs of human disease pathogens.”
Recent estimates suggest that approximately 476,000 people may be diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. The number likely includes patients who are treated based on clinical suspicion but do not actually have Lyme disease.
Ticks, according to Sherpa, are tiny, spider-like creatures that feed on blood. Many people mistake ticks for spiders or vice-versa because they are closely related.
“Ticks bite to get a blood meal, as blood is their only food and they need it to grow and reproduce,” Sherpa said. “While ticks primarily feed on wild animals like deer or mice, they’ll bite people or pets if they get the chance.”
Dogs can be just as susceptible to tick bites as humans.
“Tick diseases like Lyme are being more widely recognized because we do more routine testing,” said Mary Ann Sheller, veterinarian and owner of Vale Park Animal Hospital in Valparaiso.
“Fortunately, the large majority of dogs who test positive for Lyme don’t actually get sick,” said
Sheller. “Their immune system fights it off and protects them, but they will usually continue to test positive for many years.”
Most dogs have no symptoms, but Lyme disease can be tricky, Sheller said, adding the illness can cause lameness, serious kidney problems and neurological infections.
Ticks are mostly found in grassy, brushy or wooded areas with leaf litter, Sherpa said.
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“When a tick bites you, it latches on with its mouthparts and buries them in your skin,” said Sherpa. “They can produce a sticky substance called ‘cement’ that helps ticks to stay firmly
attached to their hosts while feeding.”
Ticks, once latched on, can feed on blood for several days, if unnoticed, during which a “cocktail of chemicals” in their saliva keeps victims from feeling pain, Sherpa said. During blood feeding, ticks may spread germs, including the bacteria that create Lyme disease or create allergies, including one to red meat.
Grace Mills said she was only 10 or 11 years old when she developed Lyme disease from a tick bite, and her symptoms were on and off.
“One second I would feel great and then the next I would feel like I had the flu,” she said. “I had low-grade fevers, fatigue and body aches, and would wake up with bad headaches.”
She started noticing red rings, mostly on her legs, which led her parents to think she might have Lyme disease. She’s grateful she was diagnosed when she was, she said, or she could have developed lifelong symptoms from Lyme disease.
Her mom Sandy advocated for her to get the diagnosis and treatment she needed.
“You know in your gut when something isn’t right, especially as a mom. Trust that and continue to be persistent and advocate for your child even if initially they can’t figure out what’s wrong,” Sandy Mills said.
Grace’s mom recalled her daughter’s illness as “a scary time,” and added Grace wasn’t one to complain about being sick. She would be playing mid-day and all of a sudden, want to go home and lie down.
“At one point, they talked about doing a spinal tap to check for meningitis, but her fevers weren’t that high so we held off on that,” Sandy Mills said. “If it wasn’t for those ring-like rashes, I’m not sure we would have thought Lyme disease.”
The best way to avoid Lyme disease, said Sherpa and Sheller, is to avoid ticks, and there are preventative measures for both people and pets.
For people, that starts with taking precautions when enjoying the outdoors, including wearing long sleeves, pants and tall socks, and tucking shirts into pants, and pant legs into socks, Sherpa said.
“Wear light-colored clothing, not because ticks hate them but because you can see ticks faster and better on lighter colors,” she said.
She also recommends showering within two hours of outdoor activities and putting clothes in the dryer on high for 20 to 30 minutes to kill any ticks that might be on them.
“Use EPA-registered insect repellents with active ingredients such as DEET, picaridin, IR3535,
or oil of lemon eucalyptus,” said Sherpa, whose research at Purdue includes studying ticks’
behavior and ways to control them, with a focus on assessing and finding natural products to kill
ticks.
As far as pets, Sheller said the heartworm blood test at her veterinary clinic checks for three tick-borne diseases.
“There are some really excellent tick prevention tools now, like the monthly oral medications
that kill ticks pretty quickly after they bite,” she said.
The CDC recommends removing ticks with fine-tipped tweezers. Other methods, said Sherpa, won’t kill them but will agitate them, making them regurgitate. “The regurgitation or saliva is where the disease-causing germs are if that tick is infected with a germ,” she said.
Deena Butterfield is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.