Summer is here and so are the ticks. These tiny parasitic arachnids infect thousands of people each year with devastating diseases. Lyme disease is the most common – a horrid disease with symptoms starting with a red rash around the bite, fatigue, fever, headache, and escalating if left untreated to debilitating complications to joints (arthritis), the heart, and nervous system.
In Quebec and the northeastern US, Lyme Disease is transmitted by the bite of a Ixodes scapularis tick, also called “deer tick,” that carries the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. The bacteria are found in about a third of deer ticks in this area. These ticks are the size of a sesame seed or small- er, but are like the vampires of the bug world: At each stage of development (larva, nymph and adult) they must feed on animal or human blood to go on to the next stage. Lyme disease got its name after it was discovered it had caused an outbreak of arthritis among children in Lyme, Connecticut, in the 1970s.
Cases of Lyme Disease and tick populations are on the rise in Quebec, in particular in the Townships and Monterégie regions. This trend is expected to continue as climate change causes temperatures that foster the spread of deer ticks. From 2016 to 2019, 1,473 cases of Lyme Disease were reported in Québec, 90 per cent of which were in the two regions. In 2022, the last year that numbers are available, 586 cases were reported. But we know these numbers are climbing every year.
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