BEWARE THE SUPERTICK
Long Island’s bloodsucking mites are taking over and carr ying up to four pathogens, say researchers
L YME disease isn’t the only awful illness ticks are capable of transmitting.
Superticks can carry up to four different diseases at a time, including Lyme disease. And these insects of mass destruction are becoming especially abundant in Long Island, according to a study published this month in the journal mBio.
“They’ve kind of taken over,” co-author Rafal Tokarz tells The Post.
It means that one bite could potentially give a person Lyme disease as well as illnesses such as potentially lifethreatening babesiosis and anaplasmosis. A quarter of the ticks examined in the study had the ability to transmit more than one disease.
“Most people think of Lyme disease when they think of [tick-borne illnesses], and that’s justified, but in Suffolk County alone, ticks can carry four other pathogens,” says Tokarz, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“Very often, we find sometimes two, even three, of these pathogens [in the same tick],” he says.
He and his fellow researchers are also growing increasingly worried about the Lone Star tick, a species whose saliva can cause an allergic reaction to meat. The tick has migrated in recent years from the southern part of the United States up to Long Island and New England. One woman in Missouri developed the allergy after a tick bite four years ago — and only just learned it was due to the Lone Star tick.
“It got to the point where my stomach would swell up; I was vomiting,” Kristie Downen said. “The rashes were real bad. It was getting to the point [that I told doctors], ‘You’re missing something — I’m still dying.’ ”
There’s currently no treatment for the meat allergy the Lone Star tick can cause, Tokarz says. But, he adds, doctors now need to start testing people who were recently bitten for multiple tickborne diseases.
“This tick, in particular, has become very troublesome,” Tokarz says. “Thirty, 40 years ago, you hardly ever found them on Long Island. Now they’ve become extremely abundant.”