Warmer Winter Weather Across North America Allows For Increase Chance of Lyme Disease

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n the last two decades, cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. have tripled. In one year, 476,000 individuals come down with flu-like symptoms accompanied by a distinct bulls-eye rash. Scott Bauer, U.S. Department of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons under Public Domain

Lyme-Spreading Ticks May Thrive in Warmer Winter Conditions Across North America

by Elizabeth Gamillo/Smithsonianmag.com

New research presented at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology’s 2022 annual meeting has revealed that black-legged ticks carrying Lyme disease flourish in below-freezing weather, reports Science’s Elizabeth Pennisi. The find suggests ticks may also increase their activity in warmer winter conditions, making tick bites more likely to occur throughout the year.

In the United States, 2021 was the fourth hottest year on record. In 39 out of 49 states, excluding Hawaii, winter was recorded as the fastest-warming season, reports Aliya Uteuova for the Guardian. With warmer winter months in the U.S. becoming commonplace, ticks are expanding their reach, and with them, Borrelia burgdorferi, the microbe that causes Lyme disease.



“They’re emerging earlier in the spring, and they’re staying active later in the fall,” said Theresa Crimmins, the director of the USA National Phenology Network and University of Arizona biologist, to the Guardian. “That’s a longer period of time that they could potentially be interacting with humans and potentially biting and spreading diseases.”

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3 COMMENTS

  1. In the USSR, all parks and forest strips were sprayed with reagents against ticks. I spent my entire childhood in nature and never even saw a tick with my own eyes.
    And now nobody needs it in Russia. And the number of tick bites we have is approximately the same.

    • Comrade, you keep forgetting that in the US, ambulance chasers aka shekelstein attorneys are being produced thousands everyday and when they don’t have a real client to defend they go after creating clients. For things of this nature first they hookup with environmentalists, then they study the chemicals being used, then they chase the users of the chemicals and their medical records (hence you have a privacy act everywhere you sign a medical questionnaire … well you know the rest.

      In Iran there are no shekelstein ambulance chasers either and a whole lot less “problems.”

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