Why We ’re Hearing More About Lyme Disease This Summer

It’s a common ritual of summer: with the warm weather comes more outdoor activities, and more encounters with disease-spreading pathogens. A summer favorite? In the U.S., the Lyme disease-carrying blacklegged tick. And with a new batch of celebrities reporting infections this summer—model Bella Hadid, singer Shania Twain, and actress Riley Keough—it’s worth taking stock of what we know about how prevalent Lyme disease really is, and the best way to protect ourselves from the tiny ticks that spread it. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In 1988, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that there were about 400,000 cases of Lyme disease in the country; by 2018, that number had increased to nearly half a million. The actual number of reported cases to the national public health agency, however, has remained far lower, ranging from a few thousand in 1988 to about 400,000 in 2018. It’s not clear yet what is driving the increase in estimated cases, but factors such as climate change, which influences the range of the tick’s habitat, and the steady push of human development into the suburbs, where ticks and small mammals like mice and chipmunks live—as well as the natural hosts for the Lyme bacteria—could also mean more infections in coming years. Is there a test for Lyme disease? Yes, although there have been questions about its accuracy. That uncertainty, however, has less to do with th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Disease Source Type: news