Tick season is here - here’s how to avoid getting bitten
With spring in the air and summer around the corner, more Pennsylvanians are taking to the great outdoors. Of course, that means more Pennsylvanians are exposing themselves to ticks, and the possibility of contracting tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease.
As of 2023, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, the Keystone State ranks as the second highest state for total cases of Lyme disease - trailing only New York - with 16,671 recorded cases, and the sixth-highest state for average of Lyme Disease cases per 100,000 people with 128.62.
Butler County ranked as the 26th highest county in the nation for total Lyme Disease cases with 631, and the 82nd highest county surveyed for Lyme Disease incidence rate, with 318.02 per 100,000 people.
According to Dr. Peter Adler, emergency department chief at UPMC Passavant, Lyme disease and most other tick-borne illnesses present symptoms similar to the flu in the early stages.
“Most tickborne illnesses typically present with symptoms that sometimes are indistinguishable from the flu,” Adler said. “Things like fever, chills, nausea, generalized body aches...basically people that have almost every tick-borne illness will have some combination of those things.”
However, in some cases — if left untreated — the symptoms of Lyme disease can become more severe, including heart complications, nerve issues, and facial palsy.
“The goal of early detection and early treatment is to try to prevent those secondary and tertiary complications down the line,” Adler said.
According to Dr. Brittany Bielewicz, family medicine physician at Butler Memorial Hospital, this treatment usually comes in the form of an antibiotic called doxycycline.
“If the tick has been on there for an extended period of time, you can get a prophylactic...a preventative dose of doxycycline, to prevent you from developing any of the symptoms of Lyme disease,” Bielewicz said.
For those who happen to spot one of these ticks on their body, there is no need to panic. It takes roughly 36 hours for the tick to transmit the disease-causing bacteria to a human after it latches on.
“You could actually be bitten by one of these ticks, notice it fairly quickly, get it off yourself, and then your risk of Lyme disease is very, very minimal to none,” Adler said.
However, for those who don’t notice the disease-causing tick in time, the most early obvious warning sign of Lyme disease in most cases is the characteristic bulls-eye-shaped rash.
“There’s typically a rash that forms at the site of the tick bite,” Adler said. “It's usually about a week or so after you've had the tick bite. So you get the tick, it attaches to you, then bacteria goes into your system. And then about a week or two later, you start developing a rash. Initially, it's a small red kind of splotch where you're bitten, and then as it progresses, you start seeing sort of a red-shaped middle.
Those looking to be proactive about avoiding Lyme disease or other tick-borne illnesses can use insect repellent containing the compound DEET, which can be applied to skin and clothing. Other ways to avoid disease-carrying ticks include wearing long, thick clothing to cover up as much skin as possible.
“One of the things you can do is wear light-colored clothing, so that you can easily spot a tick whenever you do a tick check later in the day,” Bielewicz said. “Sometimes tucking your socks into your pant leg can help too, because ticks like to climb up through your pant leg and can get in that way.”
Although the majority of Butler County’s Lyme disease cases were recorded during the summer months, Bielewicz says tick-borne illnesses can strike at any time of the year.
“We can actually see them at all times of the year. I’ve even seen them in the middle of winter, such as in February,” Bielewicz said. “But the most common time of year, of course, is when you start heading into spring, summer, and fall.”
According to Bielewicz, ticks are so prevalent in Pennsylvania and other northeastern states because of their cool, wet climate and abundance of wooded forests.
“Ticks most commonly like to live in moist environments, which is why they're more common in Western PA, because we live in a pretty damp, moist environment,” Bielewicz said. “They tend to like to hang out in tall grasses or leaves as well, which is commonly why people encounter them in the woods. But you can encounter them in your backyard as well, particularly because a lot of our backyards are surrounded by wooded areas, and also because the white-tailed deer walks through a lot of our backyards, and they're the most common host for the tick.”
However, Lyme disease, while the most well-known and commonly reported tick-borne illness in Pennsylvania, is not the only one.
“The other two most common would be anaplasmosis and babesiosis, both of which present with flu-like symptoms,” Bielewicz said.
Other symptoms for anaplasmosis include fever and muscle aches. The illness is transmitted from the same variety of tick as Lyme disease — the black-legged deer tick — and can be treated in much the same way, with antibiotics.
Although it presents with similar symptoms, babesiosis is particularly deadly for the elderly, immunocompromised, or those without a spleen. Unlike Lyme disease and anaplasmosis, which are bacterial in nature, babesiosis is a parasitic illness and must be treated with a course of anti-parasitic medications.
Another less-common tick-borne illness is alpha-gal syndrome, which is spread by the lone star tick. Although the syndrome is more commonly found in the south central and southeast states, the migration of ticks further north due to climate change has resulted in some Pennsylvania cases.
“The tick bite essentially causes this weird issue with your immune system, where you end up developing an allergic reaction to red meat,” Adler said. “So some people can get reactions up to anaphylaxis from eating meat as a result of this type of tick bite.”
