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The CDC is warning about the threat of the tick-related disease babesiosis.
By MyHealthNewsDaily staff
People who live in or travel to the Northeast or upper Midwest this summer should take precautions to avoid contracting babesiosis, a tick-born disease native to those areas, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2011, more than 1,100 cases of babesiosis from 15 states were reported to the CDC.
Ninety-seven percent of cases occurred in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Most cases — 82 percent — occurred in the summer months (June through August). More than half of infected people were over age 60.
Babesiosis is caused by the parasite Babesia microti, which infects red blood cells. Symptoms can include fever, nausea and headache, although most people infected with the parasite feel fine, the CDC says.
In recent years, cases of babesiosis in the United States have increased, and the disease may be spreading into new regions. Last year was the first time health officials reported cases of the disease to the CDC using a standard definition of the illness. Surveillance for the disease occurred in 18 states.
To prevent babesiosis infection, people who live in or travel to regions where the disease is found should take the following precautions: avoid tick-infested areas, apply repellents, wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts when outdoors, shower soon after being outdoors, and check their entire bodies for ticks, the CDC says.
Tick bites are the most common way babesiosis is transmitted, but people can also become infected through blood transfusions, and the disease can pass from mother to child during pregnancy.
In 2011, 10 people were suspected of contracting babesiosis through blood transfusions, and one case of congenital transmission of the disease was reported.
Treatments for babesiosis are effective, and usually involve a combination of anti-malarial drugs or antibiotics, such as quinine and clindamycin, according to the New York State Department of Health. But most people do not become sick enough to require treatment, and the CDC says people who do not have symptoms should not be treated with drugs.
Because there's no way to screen the blood supply for the babesiosis parasite, people known to have had the disease should refrain from donating blood indefinitely, the CDC says.
Ongoing surveillance for the disease will allow officials to develop effective prevention and control measures to reduce the burden of babesiosis, the report says.
The report will be published July 13 in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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I got my first tick this summer! Problem is, the dog gets treated with monthly tick stuff so the ticks don't want him so they come on to the humans! Amazing thing is, I didn't feel it. It was behind my ear and I wouldn't have known it; I found out about it because my hair was up and someone in the store pointed it out to me..."uh ma'am...you have a tick behind your ear". Creepie.
My younger brother got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from a tick bite in the late 60's. Back then where we lived they had no clue as to what it was until they got a report back from the CDC. He was lucky to have survived it.
jonathan1 - I was a little surprised to see this article talking about babesiosis rather than Lyme disease...and I think you've hit the nail on the head, they dont want to detect and confirm Lyme, the cost to treat would be astronomical.
if the symptoms of this disease are headaches, fever and nausea...and thats the worst it gets, why are they even alerting people?
If I got bit by a tick, my #1 fear would be Lyme disease...not some stupid headache/fever combo.
Lymes is devastating, physically and financially. A friend of mine, had a tick in his head for about 2 weeks, thought it was an ingrown hair until it grew large. 8 months later, ALS, dead 4 months behind that! Coincidence? Seems suspicious. Doctors denied any connection.
@jonathan1....excellent post and you are exactly right. Lyme disease is the fastest growing infectious disease in the USA and has been for a decade. Because of the CDC's outdated testing only one in ten are diagnosed and then almost no doctors will treat long term infection or they will loose their liscense. Almost everyone that gets Lyme also gets Babeiosis and Bartonella. Lyme is misdiagnosed as MS or Chronic Fatigue or Fibromyagia and thousands go untreated. Lyme can be transmitted from mother to unborn and in blood sexually to a partner. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg here.
It can be a whole lot worse than that, Jessica. In more severe cases, babesiosis looks a lot like malaria, with high fevers (up to 105°F), chills, extreme weakness, and severe anemia. Even organ failure is possible.
In my own case, I was bedridden for 4 months, and then underwent years of testing, from MRIs to CAT scans to constant bloodwork to spinal taps. You name it, they did it. I was (mis)diagnosed numerous times, told I'd never be able to work again, and felt like I was 90 years old.
It wasn't until I found a Lyme expert after 2 years of tests that we figured out what had happened - the tick that gave me Lyme also infected me with babesiosis.
It's good to make people aware of these things. In my own case, a simple question would have saved me years of testing - and would have saved my insurance company many tens of thousands of dollars.
PR, you too?
My wife has had Lyme for about 15 years (luckily without babesiosis) and was only recently diagnosed. It's in her brain, it's in her spine, and she has difficulty even walking for any period of time when she is not being treated (and she's a 110 lb former ballerina)
The testing standards for Lyme are terrible.
Had a local test: Negative
2nd local test: Negative
Sent that SAME blood sample to Mayo clinic: Positive
Sent that same blood back to the local lab: Negative
Retested 3rd sample at Mayo: Positive
Evidently they do manual tests at the local state lab. The DNA blot band was there, but the individual lab tech personally decides "it wasn't bright enough in my opinion, negative"
And US standard treatment protocols are just as bad as the testing.
Mark,
I'm really sorry to hear that. Really sorry.
Is she being treated by a Lyme expert now? Most doctors are still far behind the curve on this.
You got that right. Pretty sad when we stump a infectious disease specialist.
Doing some serious biofilm/cystic form busting now, shes going great, just tired from the ABX.
I really don't understand why they don't get it. There is a huge denial culture against Lyme.
---
The Lyme bacteria can go dormant in under a minute, and produces large amounts of toxins when killed, and bacteria don't purposefully torture their hosts.
A major rule of biology is that if a creature can do something, it is likely already using that ability to survive within reason.
Now put these two together. Sends out toxin signal when killed, and can go dormant. Kill one, it tells the others to go dormant.
And standard Lyme treatment is beta lactam type antibiotics that *only* kill bacteria when they are active and dividing??? Stupid. It just drives them into dormancy.
Major recent studies show that if you take equal conuts of dormant and active Lyme and treat it with the "reccomended" antibiotic, you end up with twice the number of dormant, and no active.
Older studies that the "treatment guidelines" are based on were unable to even see the dormant form in vitro.
That's new info to me, Mark. My 'episode' with Lyme/babesiosis happened in 1997 (finally fixed in 1999) - so I'm behind the curve on this, too.
After just 2 years of it, I have permanent changes. Can't imagine the damage done in 15 years of infection. Send your wife my best. Glad she's in good hands now.
Sorry for any confusion, the "sends out toxin signal" is completely my conjecture.
But it's difficult to come to any other conclusion. Spirochete bacteria didn't evolve the trait just to make their victims miserable. They do go dormant very rapidly in response to many beta lactam antibiotics, completely nullifying the effects. (other than making you feel instantly better now that all the bacteria are dormant) There is no way for the bacteria to detect the antibiotic before it divides; if it divided in the presence of a beta-lactam it would die... but they still know to go immediately dormant. How? The death signal from others.
The 50% dormant/ 50% active mix -> add Doxycycline -> 100% dormant study is not my conjecture though, was just done a year ago.
All the best to you. Consider getting retested for lyme, it hangs around much longer than babesiosis. If you live in the US, make sure to do it at a lab that has an automated western blot test machine such as the Mayo clinic. If your doc writes for a full tick disease spectrum test, it will likely go there, but be sure to ask.
Just ask if anyone needs any of the studies mentioned.
I thought babesiosis is a disease that makes a woman real babe
Not exactly but you are close - Babesiosis is the ailment men get when they have drank too much alcohol and they look at a dog and see a babe.
This ailment has been known to affect the female of our species also.
jonathan1 is correct. The number reported is no where near the actual numbers. Jessica, 70% of the people with Lyme have co-infections of which one is babesiosis. Like everything about tick borne infections, the symptoms listed in this article diminish the real affects of the disease. The "headaches" are often migraines and some people go months without relief from the pain. I alternated between a headache and a migraine for over a year without so much as a minute without pain. Asthma is also a symptom as are severe night sweats, overwhelming fatigue, and an absolute lack of ambition. I was biten forty some years ago and have suffered through misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis, one of which included MS. I have been in treatment for 2 1/2 years and am still fighting babesiosis. To only treat if one has symptoms, as stated in the article, is just setting someone up for misery down the road. Maybe a strong immune system will eradicate it, but maybe not.
My son got this in 2010 in NJ at 6years old. His doctor misdiagnosed it for a week because it is mostly a clinical diagnosis which most doctors aren't confident enough to go on. We researched his ever growing tick bite on the internet with his symptoms. The antibiotic of choice was tetracycline (which stains teeth), but we pleaded to try Rfampin first. He was about a day before a major ICU stay. The Rfampin worked great with a major improvement in a day. Lesson learned in going with your instincts and teaching the doctor to do something before it gets too bad and need the patient to go to the hospital.
I read you are supposed to save any tick that attaches to you so it can be tested.
Stonepipe....Most ticks that carry Lyme are so small you never see them. Most are the juvenile ones in the early spring. Do some reading on this.
The upper midwest - Wisconsin. I guess different states have different species of ticks. I remember reading in the Missouri Conservationist magazine that in Missouri there are a 34 different species of ticks, most of which like humans. I also read that the tick secretes like a cement to attach themselves to the host and to let go it has to secrete another chemical which takes about 30 minutes to dissolve the cement and until it does, it can't voluntarily let go. One Missouri couple told me the method they use to induce the tick to secrete the second chemical is to put campo-pheniqe? I believe on the tick, cover it with a band aid. In a half hour remove the band aid and the tick has let go. Twice when I was growing up, I had 20 ticks stuck on me. The first time I was bare back riding on a horse through some woods. The second time, I was just standing outside for 15 minutes at a farmers house. One of those times I had a tick stuck to the end of something I could write a poem about that rhymes with tick. The spray went all directions as he was well centered. My mom and the neighbor lady worked on him for a really long time trying to induce him to let go. I'll never forget that. I don't like ticks and is about the only thing I don't like about Missouri.
Cement? The tick can't immediately let go? Nonsense. Just take hold of the tick and remove it. Anyone who tells you to mess around with it for 30 minutes hasn't lived in tick country all his life.
@ Ludwig If that one tick was where you say it was, maybe there was a reason why it took the neighbor lady so long to remove it!
@Nathalie-1165335....you are dead wrong...you grab a tick and pull it out you leave the mouth and sometimes the head still in the skin and you have REAL trouble. Do your homework !
You're supposed to light a match, blow it out, and put the head of the match near the tick's bottom. It will backtrack itself out of your body.
Whenever our dog had a tick my dad would use a lit cigarette to burn the tick. It seemed to work really well.
My father was one of the first people to get babesiosis in the states some years back, it damn near killed him. He had a bad liver already and the parasite wreaked havoc on his body. It took them 2 weeks in ICU to get the results back from the CDC. His kidneys had even shut down by that point. He was in hospital for over a month. So, please take this serious. The parasite reduced my father from a 6'5' 250lb man who was relativly healthy (except for his liver) to a 6'5' 160lb man in two weeks they told us he was dying and to say our goodbyes. For "healthy" individuals you may get mild symptoms but for those that aren't "100%" it can be deadly. My father lives in the cape and was bitten in his back yard. Just thought some of you should know. just my two cents.
I was diagnosed with Babesiosis in 2007. This was after months and months of unrelenting exhaustion and weakness. When I tested positive, I had never even heard of it before and my doctor did not prescribe the correct medication. He told me it was a "cousin" of Lyme. It is a parasite that is not treated by antibiotics, but antiparasitic meds. It attacks your red blood cells reaking havoc on your body. This treatment saved my life and I feel the article really downplays how serious this disease can be. Thank God I was not immune comprimised. This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as how bad the Lyme and co-infection epidemic will get!
@everybody...thanks for all the info; I will keep that in mind if I start feeling "weird". The dude in the store used nailpolish; he said it causes them to lose air so they automatically come out; the whole thing was gone and done in less than a second. Key is you have to lift up its little body and put the polish under the body so it will get to his head...whatever, but it worked. I think deer ticks are the only ones that give you Lyme Disease and what I had was a dog tick not a deer tick.
@YRUNuts.....Deer tick is just a name like 'house fly'....ANY tick can give you lyme but so far only 2 species are shown to do this. The Lone Star tick being the other.
I have cured a number of lyme disease cases by treating, what is called their major disturbance field. At approximately 80% of the cases, the patients have had some type of surgery within six months to a year before he diagnosed with Lyme disease and my treat to the surgical areas with neural therapy, the disease changes. I do not believe that Lyme disease is caused by a germ because I don't believe in the germ theory of disease. Read my book which is titled "Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs "and that'll explain all about what is now called lyme disease.
I view the human body is an eight cylinder car as if it's built by God. Surgery is a legal attack with a knife and ends up cutting a part of that magnificent eight cylinder car. Just for your further information, I am an M.D. and I use a lot of German remedies including stem cells. Go to sleep
@Dr. B. I am an MD too, and I definitely go along with your thinking about surgery being an attack on the body and interferring with God's creation. Even in WWII the Germans came up with a lot of things that are still being used today (or at least the concept is)--I know the thought of Germans in WWII conjures up a lot of ill feelings, but it is what it is. I will read your book. Thanks for sharing.
Dr B and YRUNuts
you both claim to be MD's?
As in Medical Doctors?
Doctors of what????
Scarey, huh?
FYI. When the tick releases the chemical to break down the bonding agent (A.K.A. cement) that is when the bacteria that cuses Lyme disease and the parasites that cause babeliosis are released into the host. Lyme is only found in deer ticks. That is why most people don't remeber the tick bite at the time of the diagnosis. Because it had fed and left.
A few years ago I was living in Connecticut and regularly walked my dogs in the woods and fields. Ticks were so common I thought little of them. On a trip to the west coast I began to feel ill--not bad during the day but at night I developed a bad cough, chills, and fever. It got worse until, after a bad night in a hotel, I told my wife that I thought I was dying. When we reached the small Colorado town where my family lived I was taken to the local hospital emergency room. I had a temperature of 107, was admitted. My urine was a deep red color and the diagnosis was that I was suffering from malaria. Got worse and we soon flown to a major hospital in Colorado Springs where I spent 6 weeks in ICU (mostly in induced coma--"coded" twice) and another month in rehab. Flew back home and spent a semester off (I was a university professor) while continuing with physical therapy. No major physical or mental consequences. Since then I had two bouts of ehrlichiosis--another tick borne disease in which the microbe attacks the white cells. Spent one week in hospital with IV antibiotics. While most who are infected through tick bites have few or minor symptoms, some, like myself, are particularly sensitive for some reason. Take it from me--these diseases are no fun and can potentially be lethal.
Those numbers are totally unreliable, yet the media report them as actual incidence.
The CDC did not have a single report of any babesia species except microti, so that shows you how inaccurate they are. I got Babesia duncani in CA, and it is thought to be just a west coast type. In fact, it is showing up in tests in the east too.
CDC surveillance of a disease is passive. They wait for reports to come in, and the criteria are so strict that many/most cases are missed. Furthermore, states don't necessarily do a good job of dealing with the reports they do get, because of lack of funding, lack of interest, etc. TheCDC says the real count does not matter, they know all cases are not reported, and what they want is trend. Unfortunately these numbers are then used by everyone as the total number of people who actually got the disease. People think then that the risk is minimal, and the doctors don't look for it.
Ticks can be no bigger than a pinhead or even smaller and still transmit lyme and babesiosus. I believe there are many people suffering from Lyme disease that have been mis-diagnosed and don't even know it.
So out of a population of 310 million, 1100 got this disease
that means you have a 0.000000354 probability of catching this disease.
isn't fearmongering a wonderful thing?
And there are zero gay people in Iran because none are reported. Aren't misunderstood statistics wonderful?
Few cases of babesiosis are diagnosed, not all diagnosed cases are reported to the CDC.
Babesiosis is poorly understood, regularly misdiagnosed, and can be fatal - hell yes they should do an article on it.
So if a crime spree affects less than 1000 people, should it not be reported on to avoid "fearmongering"?
You go ahead and be afraid, mark. That's Okay.
Go defend your misstatements and need to be right to the people that have been directly affected by this disease and tell them they couldn't have used this information buddy. I'm sure they will appreciate your ego validation.
They are right above in comments 1.6, 4, 7, 8, 13, & 14.
...
Check out the video/documentary called "Under Our Skin" on youtube.com. Very enlightening material.
I am in Texas whereas the CDC says lyme disease is rare and most of the doctors I have seen buy that line. The brilliant ones do not - take the time to investigate on their own and discover NOT TRUE. Found 3 ticks in our garage October 2011. All 3 deer tick and all three had the borrelia bacteria in their guts. Now do I think this is coincidence that I magically am the only one that harbors bacteria transmitting ticks in my garage - NOPE dont. Time to go to AA admit we have a tick borne illnesses and move on to solving it instead of burying the truth with a bunch of trash controversy. Wake up we have a problem with tick borne illnesses.