Blumenthal secures funds for tick research
NEW HAVEN — One of Connecticut’s leading tick research labs is getting $239,000 in federal funding as part of a Congressionally-directed effort to combat illnesses such as Lyme disease and babeiosis.
On Monday, U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal announced a $239,000 federal grant for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, which has been studying the recent boom in Connecticut’s tick population, as well as the northward expansion of disease-carrying species, such as the Gulf and Lone Star ticks.
“We’re in a battle with ticks, and the ticks are threatening to win,” Blumenthal said Monday. “Ticks are moving northward … it’s an alarming and frightening pattern of ticks finding warmer climates further north as a result of climate change.”
For decades, Connecticut has been at the epicenter of research on tickborne illnesses. Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne disease in the United States, takes its name from the eastern Connecticut town where it was first discovered in 1975.
Connecticut now averages more than 2,700 cases of Lyme disease each year. Public health officials have also raised concerns about other illnesses, such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, the Powassan virus and an unusual condition associated with ticks that causes people to become allergic to red meat.
Deer ticks and dog ticks are the most common species in Connecticut, but have been joined recently by the spread of other species from the South, and as far away as Asia. Each species of tick carries the risk of spreading different diseases.
Last year, CAES collected nearly 6,000 ticks from residents, physicals and local health departments for testing, according to Goudarz Molaei, an agricultural scientist who leads the station’s passive surveillance program for ticks.
Molaei said the money from the federal grant will go to support the station’s research into the expansion of tick species such as the Gulf Coast tick, which was first identified in Connecticut in 2020. He said his team is also interested in learning why the number of tick specimens sent to his office from rural corners of the state has declined relative to other areas of the state, citing concerns that some residents have become “desensitized” to the risks posed by ticks.
The station received a similarly-sized federal grant in 2023, which was used to expand testing in rural towns.
In addition to the money earmarked for CAES, Blumenthal said the most recent federal budget includes more than $100 million dollars to support national research on tick-borne diseases and a program to develop new strategies to combat and treat Lyme disease.
Much of that money will go toward the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, to be rolled out in grants that Blumenthal said CAES will also be eligible to apply for.
In 2019, Congress passed the Kay Hagan Tick Act, which was named for the late North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, whose death was attributed to complications from Powassan virus spread via a tick bite. Both Blumenthal and his Connecticut counterpart, Sen. Chris Murphy, served as co-sponsors of the bill.