A recently arrived disease-carrying tick from down South is spreading through Connecticut, and a fatal deer virus new to the state is being transmitted by gnats. Scientists believe climate change may be responsible for both emerging threats.
The biggest risk for humans involves the lone star tick, which was detected in significant numbers in Connecticut for the first time in 2017 on an island off Norwalk. This invasive tick has now spread as far as Milford and neighboring towns, according to Goudarz Molaei, a research scientist at the Center for Vector Biology & Zoonotic Diseases in New Haven.
Molaei is the senior author of an article in this month’s New England Journal of Medicine that details the “rapid range expansion” of the lone star tick throughout the northeastern U.S. during the past 40 years.
Diseases that the lone star can give humans include ehrlichiosis, Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI), spotted fever rickettsiosis, tularemia and Heartland virus. It has can also cause an allergy to red meat in some people, according to experts.
Molaei said Friday that it is “pretty clear” that the rising temperatures associated with climate change are a key factor in the spread of the lone star tick from Southern states into the Northeast.
He also warned that the establishment of this type of tick in addition to the black-legged or deer tick that carries Lyme Disease “could alter dramatically the dynamics of tick-borne diseases in this region.”
“There have been cases of lone star tick-associated illnesses in Connecticut,” said Molaei, who added that he doesn’t haven any information as to numbers of people who have fallen ill from one of the several tick-borne diseases involved.
Only two of the diseases the lone star tick is capable of transmitting to humans are reportable to the state Department of Public Health, and a health official said no cases have been reported for those two types of illness.
User Upload Caption: Deer
Molaei said identifying the diseases the lone star tick is capable of transmitting can be difficult and that it will be important for doctors and the general public to become aware of the risks this invasive tick will present as it spreads its range.
A scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Molaei said the lone star tick has now been identified in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.
The other invasive virus that’s now worrying Connecticut researchers is called epizootic hemorrhagic disease and is only fatal to deer and deer-related species, not humans.
Connecticut environmental officials say the disease apparently first hit in this state in the autumn of 2017. Authorities were alerted to “an unusual die-off” of white-tail deer in central Connecticut and had the carcasses of dead deer analyzed at the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Connecticut.
The results turned up epizootic hemorrhagic disease, a virus “never before recognized in Connecticut,” officials said. There is no treatment for this disease, and it has a high fatality rate among white-tail deer, according to experts.
The virus is transmitted by tiny gnats commonly called midges or “no-see-ums.”
Guillermo Risatti, interim director of the veterinary lab and a UConn professor, said in an email that researchers are now seeking “to understand the role of climate change” in in the northern spread of these disease-carrying midges.
A 2015 study that involved scientists from both Canada and the U.S. stated that these “biting midges are believed to be particularly responsive to global climate change.”
A deer that contracts epizootic hemorrhagic disease usually starts showing symptoms within a week of infection. Those include loss of appetite, weakness, loss of fear of humans, fever, with swollen head, neck, tongue or eyelids.
According to the website of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, deer that contract the disease typically die within 8-36 hours of the onset of symptoms.
Gregory B. Hladky can be contacted at ghladky@courant.com.
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