It’s not your imagination — the midcoast has become Maine’s tick hot spot, according to new research from the University of Maine.
The study, published in the Journal of Maine Medical Center by UMaine’s Cooperative Extension’s Tick Lab, named Waldo, Knox, Hancock and Lincoln counties as the most active in the state for ticks.
Notably, those same midcoast counties also had the greatest incidence rates of Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis — the most common tick-borne illnesses in Maine.
Dr. Cheryl Leichty, who for 20 years has been a consultative physician on infectious diseases for MaineHealth Pen Bay Medical Hospital, said that she’s seen marked a rise in anaplasmosis in particular. Caused by a bacteria transmitted in tick bites that can cause fever, headache, muscle aches and chills, anaplasmosis can, if left untreated, eventually lead to more serious complications like respiratory failure and organ damage.
“Anaplasma, over the last five or 10 years, we’ve seen a lot of it. And as you get older, anaplasma is more likely to make people really sick up front.” Leichty said. “Babesiosis used to be rare in Maine, but it is not rare now. And the greatest concentration of babesiosis cases now is actually in the midcoast.”
Babesiosis is similar to anaplasmosis, though many healthy people infected with the bacteria experience no symptoms. Older and immunocompromised people are more vulnerable.
The new UMaine report on tick activity was based on six years of data gathered from across the state.
The school’s TickLab encourages members of the public to submit ticks for identification (for free) and testing ($20), which has allowed scientists to compile a database of more than 22,000 specimens collected at known locations across Maine’s 16 counties.
“This data is important in determining public health risks and can be used to guide targeted intervention strategies, education campaigns and proactive measures to manage ticks,” said Griffin Dill, UMaine’s Tick Lab coordinator.
The most common specimens were deer ticks, which can carry Lyme and other diseases, followed by dog ticks. The paper noted that a disease carried by lone star ticks, which hail from the American South, has been detected in Maine deer as milder winters allow the warm-weather ticks to expand their territory.
Historically, incidence rates of Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis were highest in Maine’s southern counties, with York and Cumberland being most affected, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Maine Tracking Network. More recently, though, case reports began to move north and geographically cluster in the midcoast, which now has the highest incidence of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
“Although first detected in southern Maine, our data continue to suggest that the current epicenter of [deer tick] activity in Maine remains clustered in the midcoastal region,” the UMaine scientists wrote in their paper.
Leichty also pointed out that better technology and testing regimes have led to higher incidence rates. “Either there’s more anaplasmosis, or we’ve just been better at recognizing it,” she said.
The Midcoast’s diverse coastal habitats, abundant host species and increasingly mild winters facilitate both tick survival and pathogen proliferation.
UMaine research on ticks and tick-borne diseases is supported by almost $6.2 million of congressionally directed spending and annual state funding.
The Tick Lab is part of UMaine’s Cooperative Extension, which is a chapter in a nationwide educational network focused on bringing university research to local communities. The network operates through land-grant universities in each U.S. state, and is federally supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Mainers can contribute to the Tick Lab’s passive surveillance project by submitting ticks for identification and testing online at ticks.umaine.edu, then mailing the specimen to the UMaine Extension Tick Lab at 17 Godfrey Drive, Orono, ME 04473.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.
