Summer is here and so are the health risks that goes along with it. One of the risks that health officials identified are the mite and tick-borne diseases that plague the United States. It was common knowledge that Lyme disease was the culprit brought by the mite and tick-borne diseases; new records show that besides Lyme disease, other infections are caused by other bacterium or virus spreading at the height of summer and winter activities.
Massachusetts researchers recently discovered a different strain of bacteria that cause illness carried by deer ticks. Two patients on record suffering the same fate, one in Massachusetts and the other in New Jersey. The researchers' paper is published in the pages of "Internal Medicine" expressing that Lyme disease, the most common of mite and tick-borne diseases, is not the only bacteria that is being carried by these parasites since Lyme is prevalent in these areas.
Mite and tick-borne diseases discovered a new infection that is introduced to the researchers. It manifests the same symptoms as that of the Lyme bacteria. Scientists called the bacterium "Borrelia Miyamoto," known to be the fifth human disease spread by deer ticks. The disease passes their havoc in times of summer and winter seasons, reports Boston Globe.
The symptoms begin with vomiting and a fever experienced by the victim. A five-month-old baby was bitten by a carrier tick of the disease. It took a few days for Baby Liam to be brought in for admission in a hospital and was found that his brain was swelling. The boy is the first victim to be diagnosed with a new strain of mite and tick-borne disease at the Connecticut Children's Medical Center infected by the "Powassan virus".
There is no treatment available at the time Baby Liam got the virus and half the people in contact with the virus suffered permanent brain damage. Of these victims, 10 percent die and while POW is nowhere near the area of habitation, doctors think that the tick-borne POW was carried by his father from a deer hunting expedition. Lyme is more prevalent than this virus but POW is now showing more often, reports Wired.
Along the way, deer could have picked the POW virus from skunks or badgers, history of the POW virus is carried by the weasel family. Phil Armstrong, a virologist, and entomologist from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station have data available for mite and tick-borne disease research since the 70's. Armstrong says that POW was not present before in the samples they collected. Going back to these places recently show that data sampling of mites was at two to three percent carrying the POW virus.
It is not only Lyme disease that carries mite and tick-borne diseases. Other infections are on the rise and it is best for individuals to be thoroughly checked and treated when symptoms start to appear.
