Disability and Progress-October 23, 2025-Ticks!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: KPI.org it's greetings. [00:01:00] Speaker B: You're tuned to KFAI 90.3 FM, Minneapolis and kfai.org and you're listening to Disability and Progress where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. Tonight, Dr. Benjamin Clark. Dr. Clark is a professor at the community of, Sorry, the University of Minnesota Medical School at the Duluth campus. His research interests include Lyme disease, immunology and endocrinology, and the development of active learning tools to reach biomedical concepts. Excuse me. Dr. Clark, thank you for joining us. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Thank you for having me tonight. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Really appreciate your time, sir, and want to start out with tonight we're talking about tick and tick borne diseases and I have to admit to you, every time, every time I think of tics, I start running my hands through my hair and checking myself thinking, oh, I have too many memories of camping and being the ultra good sensory feeler and I was in charge of checking everyone's heads. So anyway, can you give me a little bit more history about you and how you got to this field? [00:02:32] Speaker A: Yes. The technical term for what you're saying is the eevee jeebies. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Ah, yes, you're right. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Know that sensation quite well. Yeah, the very last thing you said for what I, I'm interested in is community outreach and actually trying to encourage young people to get into biomedical research. And I was looking for topics that would engage students. And one of the things, you know, particularly up here in Duluth, everybody loves the outdoors. They're out and they're enjoying. And of course you're out there early spring and late fall, there's always those little critters running around, hopping off of branches. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Always wanting to cheer nasty diseases. You know, that's, that's their, their goal in life. So at any rate, I developed that as a research project and I've gotten quite a few undergraduates involved in it and a few graduate students. So over the years I've been working on this for I'd say about eight years and I'd say probably on the order of about 50 or 55 undergraduates. And I've gotten three students through a master's degrees on this topic. So yeah, we've been doing a lot of work. When I started out, I was really just interested in the field work. The way I got involved was a physician just north of Duluth. I was having a number of patients come in with, with symptoms of Lyme disease. And when he would go to the Department of Health webpage for Minnesota, those, those web pages back then were at Least five years out of date. And they were just showing the infested areas as being probably around Pine county, which is considerably south of Duluth. And he was wondering why were he. Why was he getting so many patients up north of Duluth, coming down with it? And so the whole idea of this story kind of invoked ideas of, you know, climate change. Right. What could we be doing about changing the terrain that favored ticks, favored Lyme disease. So it made a great story for the students. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:04:39] Speaker A: And it's been actually a very popular topic with them. [00:04:42] Speaker B: I'll bet it has. So for those of you us who are blessed to have had one on us, we know really what they are. But for those who haven't been lucky enough, what exactly are ticks? Give an, you know, kind of description. And where are they most commonly found? [00:05:06] Speaker A: Well, you know, ticks are found everywhere except for in the polar regions, a little bit too cold. Surprisingly, they even find ticks on were very remote islands in the Indian Ocean. You can't get more remote than that. Ticks reach that. So they're everywhere. There's a lot large, there's a quite a variety of them. But we're mostly interested in three different ticks in our area that carry diseases. But a lot of the ticks, they specialize on who they feed on, and so we don't normally interact with them. Like, for instance, moose have a soft tick that gets on them, and they can carry many thousands of them on their body. It can really drain a lot of energy out of them. And you'll see them rub it up against trees trying to get the ticks off of them. But those ticks never bother us. The ticks that we're most interested. Well, the ticks that cause us concerns really feed off of rodents. And so anywhere where you have mice, and particularly the deer mouse, I was. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Always wondering how we got the deer ticks out. So that brings me to, like, how many different kinds of ticks are there? And it sounds like we only need to worry about three. But how many live in Minnesota? How many different kinds are there? And then how many different kinds live in Minnesota? [00:06:39] Speaker A: Well, you caught me there. I'm not certain about how many variety of ticks there are that will out there in the environment. I'm sure that there's got to be at least 20, 25 different versions of them. But we really only are troubled by three ticks. There's the Lone Star tick, which is a new pump. [00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought it used to just be in like, Colorado or whatever. [00:07:10] Speaker A: That's Right. And that's one of the arguments people use to say that there's a climate change issue going on is that they were appearing in southern Minnesota probably about five, six years ago and they're even moving up here towards Duluth. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Wow. [00:07:26] Speaker A: Then there's the dog tick and then the deer tick. And it's the deer tick that really is the topic for what we're, we're talking about tonight is all the really bad diseases that affect us. Most of them come from the, the deer tick. [00:07:42] Speaker B: What about the little star tick? Does that have diseases? [00:07:46] Speaker A: Well, that's got a really unusual one and I, I'm not sure if I call it a disease or it causes an allergy in us, but that's the meat allergy. [00:07:57] Speaker B: Oh, don't do it yet. I'll, I'll get to that one. So that, that's good. That. Yes. And so the do. Is that what it sounds like? Is it? [00:08:07] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, it's, it's the one that you normally will see. [00:08:10] Speaker B: See those nasty big, huge things on a, a stray dog that get like the size of your pinky finger? [00:08:18] Speaker A: Well, that's a blood and gorged one. And that's usually at the end of their life stage. So chicks, they molt and so they, they go through, at least the ones that we're interested in, go through three molts. So they're, they're born as a larvae. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:33] Speaker A: And it's real strange. The larvae only have six legs. Then they have a blood meal that they slightly engorge and then they go to sleep. That's going to sleep, might be a couple of months. And then they come out of that sleep and then they're a new shape. You know, they've gone through this metamorphosis, shape change. And from the larvae to the nymph, they, they gain two more legs and they become eight legged. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Ew. Okay. [00:09:00] Speaker A: So that the nymph and the adult are the ones that are eight legged. Each one of them, when they, they attach, they feed for quite a while. Many, many days actually. And so that big one that you're talking about, that's about the size of a fingernail. The engorged female tick, right before she lays eggs, she's probably been engorging. And this is, this is kind of a, another ebg topic is that she could be on there about 10 to 10 to 12 days attached. So it's very rare you're ever going to see something like that on us. [00:09:39] Speaker B: But dog, I've seen stray dogs with that. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:46] Speaker B: So I want to talk about temperature because you mentioned about how the Lone Star tick is up here now, which I have. I didn't know that. Exactly. So I'm wondering what temperatures do ticks generally, they must have a really wide temperature that they can stay active in. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very insightful. They're quite hardy. They're able to handle are hard freezes here in the, you know, in Minnesota. I think if you, if they're above ground they could probably handle maybe 0 degrees to maybe 5 degrees, minus 5 degrees and live. [00:10:29] Speaker B: Wow. [00:10:29] Speaker A: But they actually get down the duff and it's a little bit warmer in the ground where the above ground temperature may drop down to minus 20 and they survive. And on the flip side, by hiding in that duff, they actually can survive forest fires. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. [00:10:45] Speaker A: So they can, you know, there's these extreme heat differences. [00:10:49] Speaker B: It's almost like a cockroach. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. They're, they're resilient, they. But for them to be active. If I can explain the lifestyle of a tick. Sure. In the day and daytime when the sun rises, they, they actually crawl out of the debris on the ground and they crawl up a stem or a stick and then what they're going to try and do is perch at the end of that and they, they're what you call an ambush predator. So they just sit there very still until you come along. It's like a snare. As soon as you come along, they grab on. Wow. And so that's actually temperature dependent. They don't like to be out with temperatures probably below, you know, in that, that kind of environment. Oh, I'd say about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And when the temperature gets up over 80 degrees, they're going to probably see cover. So about the temperature that we like to be out in the outdoors is when they like to be out there. So the other thing that they're, they're very sensitive to, I should mention, is arid. They, they don't like low humidity. [00:12:01] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know that. [00:12:03] Speaker A: A little side note that it kind of protects you in the air conditioned house where it's chilled and it much drier, they don't last very long. So if you ever worry about your dog bringing in a tick and it drops off, chances are it won't survive very long. [00:12:20] Speaker B: So you probably are getting cold enough that they're not really active. But we still have 50s and 60s here. So we probably still have some, huh? [00:12:38] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, you see that kind of cold burst actually stimulates them to want to go out and get a blood meal that's kind of like, I hate to. It's kind of strange to say it's a wake up call. Wow. But they're trying to get that, that big blood meal so that they can go to sleep over the winter. Ah. And that they have to get enough blood to last over the winter. [00:13:00] Speaker B: How long do they live? [00:13:03] Speaker A: That's a good question. Because when you read a magazine, you see something about it. They'll say it's usually about a two year life cycle. But if they miss a blood meal, they can actually, they've stored enough blood in them that they can actually extend it. And some ticks can probably last maybe three years or a little bit longer. [00:13:22] Speaker B: Wow. And so when they lay eggs, how many approximately do they lay? I'm probably going into way more detail than most people want to hear, but I'm curious. [00:13:34] Speaker A: Oh, sure. It's quite a few. So it's kind of hard to see those eggs. They kind of look like white flowery material in the duff. They'll feel very fine like a, like a felt. And Approximately maybe about 1 to 2,000 chicks are laid. Eggs are laid. Wow. Yeah. And what they'll do is that usually they're around the den of a, of a rodent. Lucas is the deer mouse. And so they'll, they'll usually, they'll lay the eggs right there. So that when the newborn mice come out and they merge, they feed right on them. And so it's an opportunistic situation. So they'll take that blood meal and then they go back to sleep and they'll sleep through the summer and they'll wake up probably around this time with a hard freeze. And then they wake up and what they're going to do is try and grab another blood meal before the winter. [00:14:38] Speaker B: My goodness. [00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So now I said that there could lay, you know, anywhere from one to 2,000 eggs. Not very many of them survive that because it is by chance that they come across a prey to feed on. [00:14:52] Speaker B: Thank goodness. [00:14:52] Speaker A: They take a pretty big hit. Yeah, absolutely. The time, the, probably the stage that is most dangerous to us is the nymph. So these little larvae, they can't really crawl very far. And you have to think that they're going to get up and perch where they can get to a prey. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Right. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Something that's as small as, you know, it's just probably, oh, probably the size of a small flake of powder, you know, a flower. And you can barely see it. So it would take them half a day to crawl up the length of a, of a leaf of grass. [00:15:32] Speaker B: So a lot of the height they. [00:15:33] Speaker A: Need to be at. Yeah. But that's all they need for the, to attach to a, a mouse. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:15:40] Speaker A: But when they get to be a larvae, they're bigger and they can scamper a little farther and that's where they can get up into the weeds. And you know, I think there's probably about 60 or 70% kill off of the babies going into the nymphs or excuse me, larvae going into nymphs. And so there's still a sizable number of these nymphs out there and they're very hard to see. Particularly with the one that causes Lyme disease. It would be about the size of a poppy seed. You, you really have to look very, you have to search real hard. And if you're going by tactile, I don't know, possibly very good sensation, you might feel them. But to me it just feel like a little blister or something on you. [00:16:23] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:16:24] Speaker A: So it would be kind of hard to attack. Now the adult that's a lot bigger because you can actually feel it moving back and forth. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, now that we've given everyone their nasty dreams for the night, what are the most common tick borne diseases that in the U.S. oh for sure. [00:16:48] Speaker A: Well, the most common is Lyme disease. In fact, people underestimate just how big of an impact that is. And there's a little bit of a story behind that of public health. So for a long time it was not under reported because I'm not really a clinician so I don't know a lot about the coding. But when you go into a hospital and when you have a diagnosis, they'll record that a code for each disease or each symptom that you have and so that they can track what's going on. That based on that level, they were saying that probably about 30 to maybe 40,000 cases nationwide would occur each year. But there was a lot of feedback from, from the public that they were showing signs of Lyme disease. And it was there, you know, is the, the public officials weren't really paying attention to it. And someone was pretty, pretty sharp. They thought, well, why don't we follow the money? And what they did was went back and looked at the insurance records and they cross checked between people who reported with flu, like symptoms, fever and joint aches. Maybe they had the rash or maybe they didn't. But it cleared up when they were given an antibiotic. [00:18:15] Speaker B: I see. [00:18:15] Speaker A: And that's kind of like the base definition of Lyme disease is you've got all these kind of inflammatory problems going on and then it's cured with antibiotic almost overnight. And so that number jumped from about 30 to 40,000 by a factor of 10 to 400. Almost 500,000 people per year in the country. So it is a true epidemic. If not a pandemic, it's pretty severe. And the consequences for not being treated can be lifelong consequences to that. So we've kind of, that's for Lyme disease. You know, we're talking maybe, maybe a half a million a year at the top end. Then you got some of these other diseases. There's the one that's dog tick rock, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. That's pretty low. There might be maybe a couple dozen. [00:19:11] Speaker B: A year of humans that get it. [00:19:13] Speaker A: Maybe one or two. And there's, there's a couple others that you'll hear. Babesiosa, ehrlicosa. Those are all pretty low number. But a lot of it has to do with the testing. We don't have an adequate diagnostic test for this yet. [00:19:31] Speaker B: And so if you get rocky mounted spotted fever, besides, obviously it sounds like you would get a fever, but what, what are the symptoms? [00:19:43] Speaker A: Well, it's an encephalitis, so it's an inflammation of the lining of the brain. [00:19:48] Speaker B: That'S a little scary. [00:19:48] Speaker A: And so it'd severe headaches and you probably have a lot of aura, auditory problems, sensory perception type problems. But I think the biggest thing is you're going to be the swelling on the brain and the pain associated with that. [00:20:06] Speaker B: All right, so I'm outside tromping around wherever and I get a tick bite or I find a tick on me. First of all, what's the best way to remove a tick? [00:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a, that's a very important question. Because when I was younger, we would grab a tweezers and we would push on the tick and pull it out. And what you'd actually do is like a, like the bulb on a, on a, on an eyedropper. You'll push more stuff in. Oh, and so you don't want to use the tweezer on unless you're going to go up under the tick between the skin and the tick body and you need to pull it out. They have some pretty neat tools out there. Now, a lot of the outdoor shops will have these tick keys, which is really just a kind of a little splendor, a slit that you slide over the tick and under it and then you pull up and you can pull the tick out. The big problem when you pull the tick out is that you don't want to leave any traces of the tick behind. [00:21:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Sometimes improperly you can leave the head behind. That head in there normally doesn't cause a tick borne disease, but it can give a skin infection from other things. [00:21:28] Speaker B: We used to use a match. [00:21:31] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Is that bad? [00:21:33] Speaker A: Say that again. [00:21:35] Speaker B: We would use a match. Is that bad? [00:21:38] Speaker A: Oh, match, yeah. Well, it makes me feel good, but I don't know if that will make the tick pull out. [00:21:45] Speaker B: Theoretically it's supposed to make them crawl out if you burn them. [00:21:49] Speaker A: But you know, ticks glue themselves into you. [00:21:54] Speaker B: Ah, yeah. [00:21:55] Speaker A: So when they, they bite and they, they stick their, their proboscis or this long tube into you, it's like a hypodermic needle. One of the very first things they do is they seal themselves on. And so when you pull on the tick, you can actually pull some skin up with it. And that's why it's so difficult to remove the tick as it's glued in. It's an interesting glue because not only can they glue themselves in, but then they can immediately detach themselves. So they have an agent that will release them right away. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Okay, so I've been bitten by the, the tick. Obviously I've gotten it out, but I have no clue. I mean, I might have some concept of how long it's been on. So how quickly can a tick transmit an infection after, you know, after biting someone? [00:22:46] Speaker A: Another very important question there, and it depends on the disease you're talking about. So if you're talking about one of these viral diseases or there's another one, certain bacteria called a rickettsia, kind of like, well, Rocky Mountain spotted fever would be one of them. Those can be transmitted fairly rapidly. As soon as the tick attaches, it can introduce the pathogen pretty, pretty quick. Lyme disease is kind of different. It's a different story. It's, it's, it's going to be kind of another one of those gross stories to tell you right now. But when the tick attaches, the bacteria is in its backside of his hind gut and it's kind of the bacteria for bacteria. It's sleeping and so it's very quiet and it gets this warm blood in there, a lot of nutrients, and it warms up. It's kind of like waking up and it begins to proliferate. And as the tick is feeding, it draws in blood and the tick can't manage that fluid. So it's, it regurgitates or spits back into you. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, nice. But it retains the, the protein in the cells that it brings out. And so all the red blood cells it, it holds on to, but all the, you know, the, the liquid part of the plasma spits back in. So each time it flushes back in, that's when any of these diseases are transferred over to you. Ah, for Lyme disease, it takes probably about 18 to 20 hours before enough bacteria has been produced by proliferation before it can give an effective dose to cause disease. So if you, if you have the tick on you for 18 to 24 hours, then there's a high likelihood that it transferred the, the disease. If you, if you pull the tick off within, you know, minutes to hours, there's a high likelihood you're very good chance you didn't catch anything unless you've. [00:24:51] Speaker B: Unfortunately encountered one of rare diseases, rare ticks that are carrying those rare diseases. So, yeah, okay, so I've taken the tick out, I've gone and showered like crazy and double triple checked my body. So how long do I, I mean, obviously you don't necessarily go running to the doctor, do you? Or what are the early symptoms of, you know, how long you should wait before, you know you've got an illness like something like Lyme disease. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it does vary a little bit from person to person. But some of the common things, things I've seen, you'll start getting headaches, you might have a little bit of problem with bright lights fever for sure, and joint pains. And within a couple days there's a, if it's Lyme disease, there's a chance that you'll see a rash build. And that's the bullseye rash that people will talk about. And it's a rash you really can't feel. It doesn't raise up on your skin. And so it's, it's, and it's actually, it's very hard to detect. That's why the disease actually escapes a lot of people because these rashes sometimes appear on the back or around the hairline or down where you have your, under your underwear, you know, and parts of your body people don't normally scan for. [00:26:20] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:20] Speaker A: That's why it's like have a tick check with somebody in an intimate situation. [00:26:26] Speaker B: Right, Right. [00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:27] Speaker B: You need to partner your groin or under your armpits or. Yeah. So, okay, so there is no way to look at a bite after you pull off the tick and think, well, this probably needs to be looked at. Would. It should be. Is obviously is if you can have an Idea of how long. Like if you were out in the woods and you fell asleep and didn't check somewhere and then in the morning you found it, you might want to consider going to get a check. Is that what I understand? [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yes. In fact, considering the consequences for I would not take any chances. If I found a tick attached to me, I would try and remove it. If I could bring it with me when I go visit a healthcare professional, you know, a nurse practitioner, a physician of that sort, then it's good to bring the tick because then they can do a check to make sure they know which ticket is. [00:27:33] Speaker B: That's true. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Because that's why it's important. [00:27:35] Speaker B: Certain ones carry certain diseases. I see. I get it. [00:27:39] Speaker A: That's right. And not every tick carries it. Now that's one of the things, like with my students, what we found is that roughly about half of the ticks out there carry Lyme disease. And out of that, maybe 5% might carry one of the other diseases that we're worried about. But Lyme disease is the big one. And so you basically have a 1 in 2 chance that that tick crawled on you and bit you. Might, might be a carrier. And so that's why I say don't take a chance. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:28:10] Speaker A: And even if it does mean waiting hours in the clinic before you can be seen, it's better than years of joint pain. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:20] Speaker A: Neurobore losses. [00:28:22] Speaker B: How are tick borne diseases diagnosed? Like, are there tests? [00:28:27] Speaker A: Yes, yes, indeed there are, but they're flawed and I'm going to get myself in trouble with my colleagues. [00:28:36] Speaker B: But we all here like the truth, so. [00:28:40] Speaker A: Well, there's a couple of problems. One of the things is that ticks are a master at suppressing your immune system. So what they'll do is they'll slow down the, the ability for your body to make antibodies. And that's typically the test that we use. It's a serological test. So what will. The physician will have some blood drawn and then they'll look for antibodies that bind specifically to tick antigens. And so they'll score you. That's one route. Another way is they'll look for some of the genetic material. They'll use a procedure called pcr. But there are. All of them are fraught with complications on interpretation. There isn't a conclusive proof. And so typically what the physician will do, they won't take a chance. If you had a tick bite, you're in the area or is high likelihood of the tick, they're going to proceed on with the antibiotic treatment, as they probably should because of the consequences. [00:29:44] Speaker B: Right. Dr. Clark, you talked a little bit about some of the effects when someone starts getting sick. Fever, bullseye, rash, stiff joints, things like that. What are some of the long term effects if something's not treated? [00:30:02] Speaker A: Oh, certainly before I jump right into that and this will help explain some of the long term effects. One of the problems with the tick with the test for life Lyme disease or any of these others is that if you, you catch it multiple times, let's say you're somebody, a true outdoor enthusiast and you get Lyme disease, you successfully treated with antibiotic and it clears up. The trouble is your, your body retains the memory for that. It has the antibody floating around. So, so from that point on, the serological test won't tell you if you got it reinfected. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Oh no. [00:30:41] Speaker A: So that's one of the many complications and that, that's why the prudent step is to just go ahead and treat for it. [00:30:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:50] Speaker A: And the, the alter. The other issue is that sometimes the bacteria gets in and it takes refuge somewhere in your body. And this is actually quite controversial, but it may live in you for your lifetime hiding. And so you start having recurring problems. So some of these problems are they could be rheumatoid like so you get the joint pains and you get some muscle ache and you can begin to get the neurobore losses, the stuff in the brain and actually in the heart. Now Lyme disease itself directly does. There's only one way that it could be lethal, is if it gets into the heart and it causes an arrhythmia and a heart attack. And kind of the interesting thing about that antibiotic treatment will clear it up like right away. So this cardiac version of Lyme disease isn't really talked, you know, considered a lot because it's easy to treat. But the rheumatoid and the stuff that gets into the brain can be long lasting and cause just sheer misery for your entire life. Somebody who has neuroborellosis infection in the brain, they suffer from a lot of, a lot of serious issues. They have chronic pain, they could have hallucinations, they have lots of headaches, balance problems, they have ability of cognitive dissonance, they talk about brain fog. And so it can be very debilitating. The other one is if you get it the rheumatoid, often you'll see the people after they've come down with this severe version of it. You can see these elite athletes that are really well developed musculature and within six months or a year, they're just emaciated and they're just not very active and sedate. So one of the sad parts about that particular disease is the rate of suicide that's associated with Lyme disease. And so when I say the direct death from Lyme disease, the only real cause would be the heart. It doesn't kill you when it gets into the brain directly, but it can make you so miserable that it can drive people to, into depression and that can take it to much worse things. Yes. [00:33:29] Speaker B: So it sounds like sometimes things get treated too late or aren't able to be cured as well. [00:33:37] Speaker A: That's correct. So there's a, there's sort of a timeline I, I see in the literature it varies a little bit, but I'd say within two to three weeks after you've been embittered by the tick, you really need the antibiotic treatment to effectively clear it wherever it goes. And that's just part of my research. Where, where does this bacteria go in the body? Wherever it goes, it becomes protected from the antibiotic treatment after that. And so they'll talk about post treatment Lyme disease or antibiotic resistant Lyme or persistent Lyme. All of it comes down to the fact that it really doesn't matter how much antibiotic you treat with, you can't clear it up at that point. So time is your enemy. If you get bit by tick, you need to work on it immediately. You spot the tick, go into the clinic right away, the consequences are just too severe. [00:34:36] Speaker B: Do you feel like ticks are becoming more common? [00:34:42] Speaker A: Well, and there's another interesting question. If you look at the, how they've mapped where the incidence of Lyme disease, it's been progressively moving from the east coast. The first cases were really identified around Long island and in Connecticut. In fact, that's where the name came from. There's a town there called Lyme, Connecticut. [00:35:08] Speaker B: Oh, geez. [00:35:09] Speaker A: And the first, you know, a disease does not exist until you identify it and you name it. I guess up until then there was just, you know, people talk about weird things that would happen to them if they're out in the brush and they get these weird symptoms. But there was a situation where a group of young people were out on the sand dunes and they all came down with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And very sharp physician Willie Burgdorfi actually had matched those symptoms to what was already known as a relapsing fever in Europe. And he made the connection and they were actually able to he and a couple other really sharp physician scientists were able to track it down to this bacteria and they named it. So, you know, up until 1986 or 87, Lyme disease didn't really exist. And at that point when it was named, now we know about it. So when they started mapping it first, you would see it spread from around Long island in that area. And as they progressively mapped more and more areas, they were spotting it. So it's hard to say whether it's really spreading or our detection methods is just better. Yeah, I think it's a combination of both because there's, there's a couple ways that this disease is, is spreading geographically. So it could be spreading out like it went from New England, came over to upper Midwest where we live, and the St. Croix Valley was probably the first place where they really identified it. And it's been radiating out from there. It's really heavy up around northern Wisconsin, along Lake Superior, and that now it's even gone much farther north of Duluth. The only thing that seems to restrict it is the terrain. Okay. So if you go farther west from us, the Laurentian Line, where the geography of Minnesota changes into more grassland and drier. It's very rare to find ticks that carry Lyme disease there. They don't really do very well in a low humidity environment, so they're more in the wooded areas in the temperate forests. And so I think part of the issue is just that we're better at. [00:37:54] Speaker B: Looking for it, but still found in everyone's yards. And. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Yes, and that, that actually gets into another issue too is we, we don't often think about how these diseases spread or how they move around. And it could be the case that the disease really is carried in these, these rodents, the tick, the, the bacteria really isn't truly replicating in the tick that's not its host. Think of the tick as a living hypodermic needle. And what it does is the Peromyscus that catches this disease, the deer mouse, excuse me, the deer mouse catches it. It's not really adversely affected. And so the bacteria is living in that skin, and the tick will bite, pick it up and then go to sleep, come wake up and go to take another meal. And, and when it takes that second meal, it transfers it to a new person. So that's how it's spread. So wherever the Paramiscus, or the deer mouse is found, you're going to find the deer tick, and there you're going to find Borrelia, or the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease. [00:39:12] Speaker B: So these diseases, some of the things. [00:39:13] Speaker A: That might impact it would be fox and cats. They feed and eat those. Those mice. So you keep the mice population down. [00:39:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:23] Speaker A: But on the flip side, the acorn crops, that's one of the indices some of my biologist friends will talk about is when there's a bumper crop of. Of acorns, there's a lot of the rodents, and with a lot more rodents, there's a lot more ticks. And so the forecast could go as an acorn count. [00:39:43] Speaker B: So are the ticks getting the diseases from the mice? [00:39:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:39:49] Speaker B: Ah, so they originally don't have the disease, they get it from whatever they bite. [00:39:56] Speaker A: Yes, that's right. When they're born, they do not carry the disease. [00:39:59] Speaker B: Sharing is caring, I guess. [00:40:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Once they feed, they have the chance of picking it up. [00:40:06] Speaker B: All right, so I just real quick, before I move on, I want to dispel one crazy myth that we used to. I used to always hear when I was young because I had a number of tics on me, and I know I was always checking myself and trying to get them off as soon as possible. And it was always stated, you got to get the head. If you don't get the head, they'll keep sucking, and then you could get sick. So they don't keep sucking. They'll write is just that you can get a skin infection. And then if you get the tick, as long as you get the tick, even if it's without the head, you've stopped the transmission of any disease if you get it early enough. [00:40:55] Speaker A: Well, that part I can't really tell you for sure. I can say virtually all of the diseases I know, if they happen to have a virus in that, like the encephalitis virus might be in the head, but really where most of these infectious agents are, it's in the body of the tick. They're in the salivary glands, or they're in the gut. And so when you pull the body off, you're removing that part, and all that's left is the head. And the head probably would cause the skin infection. [00:41:30] Speaker B: All right, now to the other important part. What is the best ways to prevent tick bites and how, you know, when spending time outdoors, as so many of us do. [00:41:45] Speaker A: And well, the, the safest thing is to use some kind of repellent. Permethrin or, you know, just some kind of actual repellent would do. Do the job. But clothing helps a lot. And so long pants. Tuck your. The cuffs of your pants into your socks so that the Ticks can't get exposure to your skin. And it also helps to wear light club colored, light colored clothes so that they're more apparent if you're someone to do a visual, visual check. A lot of these ticks are very small and you might be able to feel them. But when we go out, they actually use magnifying lenses to look for them on the cloth that they can be so small. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:42:39] Speaker A: And hard to detect. Yeah. So the tick, he's a, the tick is attracted to our perspiration, our breath or CO2. So. Well, you go out and let's say you didn't bathe and you got a certain powerful aroma. Well, you're very attracted to the tick. On the flip side, I, whenever we go out to collect ticks, I, I'm adamant about telling my, my crew not to wear perfumes, not to use scented soaps, anything that's aromatic, peppermint oils, you know, any of those kinds of aromatics will actually repel the tick. So a lot of times people are, you know, their perfumes can help provide protection. [00:43:29] Speaker B: So my lotion may, may do the trick. [00:43:33] Speaker A: Yeah, precisely. [00:43:36] Speaker B: Do they? [00:43:37] Speaker A: Huh? No, no, go ahead. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Do they. Does mosquito spray work? [00:43:45] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. Yes. [00:43:48] Speaker B: All right, so pants tucked into socks. Do a repellent of sorts. Please be clean and bathe. That helps. [00:44:02] Speaker A: And a long sleeve shirt, maybe. [00:44:03] Speaker B: Long sleeve shirt. [00:44:04] Speaker A: By covering you up to your neck here, your chin, they have to scamper quite a ways. But you know, they, when they're determined to get the blood, they can move pretty fast. [00:44:13] Speaker B: But you can get them on your head or, you know, below your earlobes and just crazy places. So just thoroughly do a double check and have a buddy that you pair up with that will check you because it is easy to miss. [00:44:31] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, that's correct. [00:44:35] Speaker B: So I guess just making sure that you're being cautious. And also, I just want to add, if you have pets out there, make sure they're properly treated. Now, I used to use a specific heart guard, you know, that I used for ticks and whatnot. And my vet said stop using that one because they don't. Cause, you know, they don't treat the Rocky Mountain spotted, you know, fever tick tick, the tick that carries that, the Lone Star, I think. Right. And I said, well, there's no Lone Star up here. And she's like, yep, it's been spotted in Minnesota. So you are seeing movement of ticks everywhere. Any idea that we'll get more? Because there must be other ticks that. Cause Other diseases outside of the U.S. [00:45:40] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Oh for sure, absolutely. But the ones that we need to worry about really is that deer tick carries at least 12 different diseases in addition to the Lyme disease, you know, several viral diseases and quite a few bacterial, even a couple protozoan parasites. So that's enough for us to really worry about. Now I didn't know if you wanted to talk a little bit about the meat allergy. [00:46:10] Speaker B: Yes, that's my next. There is a tick that causes a meat allergy. How does that work? [00:46:18] Speaker A: Sure. So that's the Lone Star ticket. And just so you know that it's, it's noted, it's given the name Lone Star Trek because there's a white spot on the back of the adult female. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:46:33] Speaker A: It's a little difficult to tell the other stage, life stages of that tick between the three major ticks that would affect us. They all have very similar looks. You have to really do a close inspection to be able to tell the difference. But that's not an infectious disease. What it's doing is it's causing an allergy in us. So when the tick bites, its saliva has sugar coated proteins. That's where that gal is. That's for a sugar called galactose that's decorating the proteins. And it turns out that we're the only mammals, primates, higher order primates. Yes. And things like apes, we don't have that galactose on our, in our body, on the outside surface. And so it's recognized when that tick bites you and that saliva gets in from that tick, it's recognized as a foreign agent and it turns our immune system into a hyper gear so that it looks for that. So normally when we eat we can tolerate a lot of different things that go in through the mouth that won't bother us. But if you inject it under the skin, it will cause a lot of trouble. And that galactose is one of them. So if you're bitten by the tick within weeks to maybe a month or two, you'll develop a severe allergy. They call it a delayed hypersensitivity. It's the same thing like you have with peanuts, Gotcha or beer. Bee stings, the same thing. If you eat a hamburger, you can eat jello. Any of those will trigger that response and you'll go into an anaphylactic shock. And it's, it's actually lethal, quite deadly. So people are complaining that though they can't eat meat anymore. Well, I don't think they're thinking the next Step over. You know, you lose your ability to breathe. [00:48:33] Speaker B: Right. So can that be undone at all? [00:48:39] Speaker A: I'm not read where they've done that. It's pretty hard to cure a hypersensitivity or an allergy like that. [00:48:47] Speaker B: So how common is this allergy now? [00:48:50] Speaker A: Is it becoming more common in Minnesota? We're probably in the low dozens. That might happen in a year. It's much more common when you go farther south, Missouri and Arkansas, and in that area, it's a lot more common. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Wow. What future challenges do you. Do you see, you know, us having with these kind of ticks and these diseases? [00:49:26] Speaker A: Well, we're, you know, as cities expand and we spread out, homes are out into areas where they normally wouldn't be. People are actively engaged in areas that normally wouldn't happen. We're gaining more exposure to the ticks, and it's really just our activities that are getting to us. Part of it is when we build a new shopping mall or we build a road or we build a housing complex. We push out all of the predators, but the mice can thrive in that environment. And so what we've done is we've given a perfect environment because the mice are going to feed off of our waste, you know, our trash and stuff, but there's no one to keep it in check. And so we have bumper crops of these. Of these rodents that carry the disease. And so that's really on the backhand. What the big problem is, is that we're actually favoring the mice and the rodents. And with that comes more of these diseases. [00:50:35] Speaker B: I've seen ticks on dogs, but I have a cat that goes outside. I've never seen a tick on him ever. Are they less likely? [00:50:47] Speaker A: They're probably doing a better job of preening them. [00:50:50] Speaker B: Gotcha. But they could still get sick from eating a mouse. [00:50:57] Speaker A: Well, they. The only way you're going to catch, particularly with Lyme disease, it has to be the tick. There is only one way they get good Lyme disease with tick bite. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Excellent. Because he's a great mouse. [00:51:10] Speaker A: I just want to point out that throws out. It's not transmitted by. By mosquitoes or spiders or anything else. It has to be that particular tick. The deer ticket is the only thing that can give you Lyme disease. [00:51:23] Speaker B: All right. [00:51:25] Speaker A: Okay. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Dr. Clark, it's been great having you on. Yes, and I'll go to sleep having frightening dreams, but I've learned a lot. [00:51:37] Speaker A: Well, thanks for so much for allowing me to share this information. [00:51:41] Speaker B: Thank you. It's been great. Is there anything you Would like to leave us with. [00:51:48] Speaker A: Well, if you go on the web, you'll find a site for me. It's called the Exodies Outreach Project. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Can you spell it? [00:51:57] Speaker A: And yeah, I X O D E S. Okay. Sodes tick project is so. Or you can go to the medical school webpage and pull my name up. So if you find any ticks. Actually, I don't want to be overloaded with too many dog ticks, but we actually look at the ticks to see what bacteria and viruses they carry. And so if you mail them in to us, we. We actually will test them to see if they carry these pathogens. So we're trying to do a study to find out how many ticks out there carry, say, Powassan virus. We. We didn't really talk about that nasty one, but. Or how many carry Lyme disease or any of these others and actually where in the States you'll find them. All right, so we're doing that survey. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Just real quick and real quick answer. If you can you find a tick inside your house that's fallen off your pet, what's the easiest way to kill it? [00:53:07] Speaker A: I probably smash it. [00:53:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:53:09] Speaker A: You could burn it. I mean, it's satisfying to burn it, but probably just smash it or I. [00:53:15] Speaker B: Think I've flushed one down the toilet. [00:53:17] Speaker A: Flush it down the toilet. Yeah. They won't last long. Believe it or not, they can't handle a lot of moisture. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:53:25] Speaker A: By the way, if people mail in ticks, put it in a baggie and not. Not on tape, just like a snack baggie and in an envelope and mail it to me and it'll survive the. The. The mailing routine and get the reaches. [00:53:40] Speaker B: Wow, that's scary. [00:53:42] Speaker A: And also put down where you go, where you got the tick and what, what day because we're trying to map it like seasonally and geographically. So if you do submit text, tell us where you found it and what day. And it'd be nice if you gave us your name. You know, we could. When we get a chance, we can mail back and tell you if it had what it had. Okay. [00:54:07] Speaker B: Thank you, Dr. Clark. All right, I want to thank you for joining Disability and Progress and tune in next week when we will be playing a new show that is by the. As soon as I can get it up that. Yes, the Academy of Blind Scientists. And this is from everywhere. So hopefully you're interested and want to tune in. It's been great doing the show. This has been Disability and Progress. The views expressed on this show are not necessarily those of KFAI or its board of directors. My name is Sam. I've been the host of the show. Charlene Dahl, who is out, is my research. PR person we've been speaking to tonight was Dr. Sorry, Dr. Clark. And Dr. Clark was from the campus of the Minnesota Medical School in Duluth. And he was talking about ticks and tick borne diseases. This is KFAI 90.3 FM, Minneapolis. And kfai.org thanks for listening. Take care.