hacked by p@3t_b@y for turks

To read full article: CLICK HERE

Anne M. Kiilerich , Henrik Christensen  and Stig M. Thamsborg

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 2009, 51:55doi:10.1186/1751-0147-51-55
Published: 21 December 2009

Abstract (provisional)

Background
The presence of Anaplasma phagocytophilum, an Ixodes ricinus transmitted bacterium, was investigated in two flocks of Danish grazing lambs. Direct PCR detection was performed on DNA extracted from blood and serum with subsequent confirmation by DNA sequencing.

Methods
31 samples obtained from clinically normal lambs in 2000 from Fussingo, Jutland and 12 samples from ten lambs and two ewes from a clinical outbreak at Feddet, Zealand in 2006 were included in the study. Some of the animals from Feddet had shown clinical signs of polyarthritis and general unthriftiness prior to sampling. DNA extraction was optimized from blood and serum and detection achieved by a 16S rRNA targeted PCR with verification of the product by DNA sequencing.

Results
Five DNA extracts were found positive by PCR, including two samples from 2000 and three from 2006. For both series of samples the product was verified as A. phagocytophilum by DNA sequencing.

Conclusions
A. phagocytophilum was detected by molecular methods for the first time in Danish grazing lambs during the two seasons investigated (2000 and 2006).

http://www.actavetscand.com/content/51/1/55

Species down, disease up - Study shows biodiversity loss drives human infections

The extinction of plant and animal species can be likened to emptying a museum of its collection, or dumping a cabinet full of potential medicines into the trash, or replacing every local cuisine with McDonald’s burgers.

But the decline of species and their habitats may not just make the world boring. New research now suggests it may also put you at greater risk for catching some nasty disease.

“Habitat destruction and biodiversity loss,”—driven by the replacement of local species by exotic ones, deforestation, global transportation, encroaching cities, and other environmental changes—”can increase the incidence and distribution of infectious diseases in humans,” write University of Vermont biologist Joe Roman, EPA scientist Montira Pongsiri, and seven co-authors in BioScience.

Their study, “Biodiversity Loss Affects Global Disease Ecology,” will appear in the December issue of the journal, available on-line on December 7, 2009.

Diseases Go Global

“Lots of new diseases are emerging, and diseases that were once local are now global,” says Roman, a wildlife expert and fellow at UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. “Diseases like West Nile Virus have spread around the world very quickly.”

This is not the first time humans have faced a raft of new diseases. About 10,000 years ago, humans invented farming. This move from hunting to agriculture brought permanent settlements, domestication of animals, and changes in diet. It also brought new infectious diseases, in what scientists call an “epidemiologic transition.”

Another of these transitions came with the Industrial Revolution. Infectious diseases decreased in many places while cancer, allergies and birth defects shot up.

Now, it seems, another epidemiologic transition is upon us. A host of new infectious diseases—like West Nile Virus—have appeared. And infectious diseases thought to be in decline—like malaria—have reasserted themselves and spread.

“Ours is the first article to link the current epidemiological transition,” says Pongsiri, an environmental health expert in EPA’s Office of the Science Advisor, “with biodiversity change, decline and extinction.”

“People have been working on this in individual diseases but no one has put all the studies together to compare them,” says Roman. In 2006, he and Pongsiri gathered a group of scientists and policy analysts with expertise in a range of the new diseases being observed—including West Nile virus as well as malaria, the African parasitic disease schistosomiasis, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and several others. From that meeting, the forthcoming BioScience study developed.

“We’ve reviewed all those studies and show that emergence or reemergence of many diseases is related to loss of biodiversity,” says Pongsiri.

“We’ve taken a broad look at this problem to say that it’s not just case-study specific,” she says. “Something is happening at a global scale.”

Of Mosquitoes and Mice

One of the studies that Pongsiri and Roman’s team examined was a 2006 investigation in Amazonian Peru. It was the first to demonstrate that malaria transmission can rise in response to deforestation. Though the mechanisms are complex and not fully worked out, it appears that loss of the structural diversity provided by trees led to higher density of Anopheles darlingi mosquitoes, a potent transmitter of malaria, as well as to higher biting rates.

“Or think about Lyme disease,” says Roman, calling from Connecticut.

People get this disease from ticks infected with a bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. The ticks, in turn, usually get the bacterium by feeding on small mammals—particularly white-footed mice.

“Historically, Lyme disease was probably rare, because you had a large range of mammals, everything from pumas all the way down to a widespread community of rodents,” says Roman. Ticks feed on different species, and, since many are poor hosts for the bacterium, only a limited number of ticks would carry the disease to people. But fragmentation and reduction of forests has led to deep declines in the number of mammals—and white-footed mice tend to thrive in species-poor places, like small patches of forest on the edge of neighborhoods.

“In fact, white-footed mice appear to be the most competent animal host reservoir of Lyme disease in the northeastern U.S.,” Pongsiri notes on an EPA blog, “So, the more white-footed mice that are in the forest, the greater chance more ticks will be infected, and the greater chance you have of getting bitten by an infected tick.”

In other words, if you’re worried about catching Lyme disease, it’s a good idea to wear long pants—but it might be a better idea to join your conservation commission or zoning board since “protecting large forested areas in the vicinity of residential areas may reduce the risk of Lyme disease,” the BioScience paper notes.

Eco-epidemiology

It is new to think about biodiversity—and therefore, species and land conservation—as integral to public health. Until recently, almost no epidemiologists, nor medical schools, were framing questions of human infectious disease prevention in terms of, say, habitat structure, promoting genetic diversity in non-human species, or protecting animal predators as ecosystem regulators. Human diseases, goes the conventional thinking, are best understood and treated by looking at humans.

“Now there is the beginning of a movement to bring epidemiology and ecology together,” says Pongsiri.

“We’re not saying that biodiversity loss is the primary driver for all of these emerging diseases,” says Roman, “but it appears to be playing an important role.”

“We’re trying to make the case that all of these environmental changes we’re making, because they are anthropogenic, can be managed, can be controlled,” says Pongsiri. “We may be able to actually reduce or prevent these diseases by managing for biodiversity from the genetic level to the habitat level.”

A third of the bird species on the planet are at risk of extinction and a quarter of the mammals, Roman says, “and we have an incredible amount of habitat being destroyed, along with climate change. We should expect to see the impacts of these changes occurring now, to people—and we do.”

“The standard argument for protecting biodiversity is often that, well, there are medicines out there and you don’t want to destroy a forest where you might have a cure for cancer,” he says, ” and that’s true—but I don’t think that’s as compelling as the argument that if you cut down the forest you or your kids are more prone to infectious diseases.”

Contact: Joshua Brown
joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu
802-656-3039
University of Vermont

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uov-sdd120309.php

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, February 2007, p. 426-431, Vol. 45, No. 2
doi:10.1128/JCM.01757-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Jeanne M. Howell,1* Massaro W. Ueti,1 Guy H. Palmer,1 Glen A. Scoles,2 and Donald P. Knowles1,2
Program in Vector-Borne Diseases, Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-7040,1 Animal Disease Research Unit, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Pullman, Washington 99164-66302

Received 24 August 2006/ Returned for modification 17 November 2006/ Accepted 4 December 2006

The protozoan parasite Babesia bovis, a reemerging threat to U.S. cattle, is acquired by adult female ticks of the subgenus Boophilus and is transovarially transmitted as the kinete stage to developing larval offspring. Sporozoites develop within larvae and are transmitted during larval feeding on a bovine host. This study evaluated the efficiency of B. bovis infection within Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus following acquisition feeding on acutely parasitemic cattle. Parasite levels were quantified in blood from experimentally infected cattle and within hemolymph and larvae derived from acquisition-fed female B. microplus. There was a positive correlation between blood parasite levels in acutely parasitemic cattle and kinete levels in the hemolymph of adult female Boophilus ticks following acquisition feeding; however, there was no relationship between kinete levels in females and infection rates of larval progeny. Boophilus microplus females that acquisition fed produced larval progeny with infection rates of 12% to 48%. Importantly, larvae derived from replete females with very low levels of kinete infection, as demonstrated by microscopy and PCR, had infection rates of 22% to 30% and transmitted B. bovis during transmission feeding. These data demonstrate that although hemolymph infection may be undetectable, transmission to larval progeny occurs at a level which ensures transmission to the bovine host.

http://jcm.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/45/2/426?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=pcr&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=4010&resourcetype=HWFIG

Authors: Paul D. Haemig a;  Stefan Lithner a;  Sara Sjstedt de luna b;  ke Lundkvist c;  Jonas Waldenstrm de;  Lennart Hansson f;  Malin Arneborn c; Bjrn Olsen g
Affiliations:    a From the Section for Zoonotic Ecology and Epidemiology, School of Pure and Applied Natural Sciences, University of Kalmar, Kalmar
 b Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, Ume University, Ume
 c Department of Virology, Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI), Solna
 d Section for Zoonotic Ecology and Epidemiology, School of Pure and Applied Natural Sciences, University of Kalmar,
 e Kalmar and Department of Animal Ecology, Lund University, Lund
 f Department of Conservation Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala
 g Section of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala and Section for Zoonotic Ecology and Epidemiology, School of Pure and Applied Natural Sciences, University of Kalmar, Kalmar, Sweden

DOI: 10.1080/00365540701805446
Publication Frequency: 10 issues per year
Published in:  Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 40, Issue 6 & 7 2008 , pages 527 - 532
First Published: 2008
Subject: Infectious Diseases;
Abstract
Analysing datasets from hunting statistics and human cases of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), we found a positive correlation between the number of human TBE cases and the number of red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Time lags were also present, indicating that high numbers of red fox in 1 y translated into high numbers of human TBE cases the following y. Results for smaller predators were mixed and inconsistent. Hares and grouse showed negative correlations with human TBE cases, suggesting that they might function as dilution hosts. Combining our findings with food web dynamics, we hypothesize a diversity of possible interactions between predators and human disease - some predators suppressing a given disease, others enhancing its spread, and still others having no effect at all. Larger-sized predators that suppress red fox numbers and activity (i.e. wolf, Canis lupus; European lynx, Lynx lynx) were once abundant in our study area but have been reduced or extirpated from most parts of it by humans. We ask what would happen to red foxes and TBE rates in humans if these larger predators were restored to their former abundances. 

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a788554272

Epidemiological study on the impact of ticks and tick-borne pathogens in different cattle breeds in the northern part of Bangladesh (Professional training and teaching in order to strengthen the research and teaching capacities)

Livestock plays a crucial role in the agricultural economy of Bangladesh. About 36 percent of the total animal protein comes from the livestock products in our everyday life which also helps to earn foreign exchange by exporting hides & skins every year. Mechanical cultivation still being cultivating by bovine animal. Countries 25 percent peoples are directly engaged in livestock sector, and 50 percent peoples are partly associated in livestock production. Last year, the contribution of livestock sub-sector to the GDP was 2.95 percent, which was estimated about 17.32 percent GDP to agriculture. The growth of livestock in GDP was 7.23 percent. Unfortunately there are no accurate and recent estimates available of the damages caused by disease vectors. Ticks and tick-borne pathogens are known to exist in Bangladesh.

On the basis of a 10 year collaboration between the Institute of biological Sciences of the University of Rajshahi and the University of Neuchâtel and mainly financed through private funds and the Federal Commission for Scholarships for foreign students, the present project has as a general objective to institutionalize the scientific activity through a University exchange program of the scientific expertise between the Institute of Biological Sciences of the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh and the Biology Institute of the University of Neuchâtel in order to obtain basic information on the prevalence of tick species and pathogens present in cattle in Bangladesh. This information will be used to contribute to the formulation and implementation of a national program for the control of ticks and tick-borne diseases in close collaboration with different national institutions. An exchange of collaborators of both Institutions is therefore crucial for a success of the project.

Regional distribution of ticks in northern part of Bangladesh have been studied during first phase study (2002-2003)—a total of 3’958 animals were inspected and 1’353 (34%) were infested by ticks. Compared with male animals, two times more females were infested. A total of 18’362 ticks were collected. 69% of the ticks were collected from female animals. The highest infestation rate (100%) was always recorded in female animals. A total of three different genera of ticks were identified: Boophilus, Haemaphysalis and Hyalomma. B. microplus, H. bispinosa are the most abundant ticks in all seasons and places. Hyalomma spp was reported from 20 places in Barind tract. Other species identified are B. annulatus, B. decoloratus, H.a. anatolicum and H. a. excavatum. In blood smears B. bigemmina, B.bovis, A. marginale, A.centrale, T. annulata also identified. 11 high risk areas are—Mohadebpur, Gomostapur, Durgapur, Natore Sadar, Bera, Nimgachi, Shahjadpur, Kahaloo, Jaipurhat Sadar, Kalai and Polashbari.

Prevalence, seasonality, new pathogen species have identified during second phase study period (July 2008-June 2009). Within 11 high risk areas five places (Gomostapur, Shahjadpour, Nimgachi, Kahaloo, Jaiourhat) have selected for second phase sampling. For each of five places we have collected blood samples randomly 15 animals for our study. A total of 900 blood samples have collected during one year study period. Average 11 cattle observed for ticks sampling.  A total of 4032 ticks have collected from 662 cattle during one year study. PCR and RLB-PCR are new molecular techniques now widely used for the detection of tick-borne diseases from blood and ticks in cattle. Two new pathogen species of BT and AE group have identified through this method. Further more data of prevalence, seasonality and regional distribution of ticks and tick-borne diseases will have to useful for control purpose. The training and collaboration in a mutual partnership should help to use these methods for the detection of haemoparasites in the bovine blood and in the haemolymph of ticks of cattle in Bangladesh.

Objectives to be completed during the second phase of the project:

a.) Tick and pathogen identification up to species level.

b.) Data analysis of all results collected during field sampling. Pathogen identification from blood smear yet to be
completed.

c.) Completion of RLB-PCR from blood and tick samples and gene sequence analysis of AE and BT group yet to be completed in order to indentify potentially new pathgen species in Bangladesh.

(e) Proposed visit of Rajshahi University Collaborators for constructive and mutually beneficial   collaboration.

(f)  Organization of a workshop in Rajshahi university in spring 2010 during the second visit of Swiss coordinator to Rajshahi. Probable participants are from the I.B.Sc., Rajshahi Unviersity; Parasitology unit, University of Neuchatel; Department of Livestock Services(DLS); Swiss Development Cooperatin (SDC); Food and Agriculture (FAO); UNDP.

http://www.kfpe.ch/projects/echangesuniv/Betschart1.php

By Mark Macaskill, December 6, 2009

The Prince of Wales is backing plans to use deer as “tick mops” in countryside frequented by walkers to curb the spread of Lyme disease, a deadly infection.

Prince Charles discussed the technique with researchers at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Aberdeen, who are looking for an environmentally-friendly way to curb the soaring number of ticks.

The prince, who farms sheep and cattle at his organic Duchy Home Farm at Highgrove, Gloucestershire, has said he is concerned about Lyme disease but does not support the use of chemical pesticides.

The Aberdeen team is considering lacing deer with a natural pesticide; the creatures would be allowed to roam close to areas frequented by visitors or used by rural workers.

They believe such “tick mops” would not only reduce the number of parasites but would be a more humane way to tackle the disease than culling or fencing in the animals.

“It is encouraging that [Prince Charles] is taking an interest in the issue,” said Dr Lucy Gilbert, from the Macaulay Institute.

In the UK each year, some 3,000 people are infected by Lyme disease and about 60 die. Symptoms include a rash, fever, headache and fatigue. The infection can be treated with antibiotics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6946028.ece

Published: 07:00 p.m., Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven have uncovered proof Babesia microti, which causes the malaria-like ailment babesiosis, is established in Fairfield County.

“It’s not a surprise it’s expanding,” Dr. John Shanley, a professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington said Tuesday . “I predict it will spread.”

“It’s something doctors should be aware of,” said Louis Magnarelli, an entomologist at the experiment station.

Magnarelli and John Anderson, director of the experiment station, found the protozoa in two mice. The station captured the mice in the yards of two Greenwich residents who were diagnosed with babesiosis in 2002. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s monthly report, “Emerging Infectious Diseases,” published their findings in its March edition.

Magnarelli said finding the protozoan in the mice is “hardcore evidence” the parasite is in the most westernmost town in the state. Previously, he said, researchers had found the same evidence of the disease only in New London County, with most of the state’s cases located there.

Humans contract babesiosis the same way they get Lyme disease - from the bite of a black-legged tick, a.k.a. the deer tick. Magnarelli and Anderson’s report points out that, with such a high incidence of Lyme disease in Fairfield County, “the number of cases of babesiosis is likely to increase appreciably in the future.”

Thomas Forschner, executive director of the Lyme Disease Foundation in Hartford, said the same ticks can carry at least two other diseases in the state - human granulocytic ehrlichiosis and bartonella, or cat scratch fever.

In “Everything You Need to Know About Lyme Disease” Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner, the foundation’s co-founder, wrote that a 2000 study of babesiosis found 22 percent involved co-infection with Lyme disease.

Magnarelli and Anderson’s report said 290 cases of babesiosis were diagnosed in Connecticut between 1991 and 2000, with 230 found in New London County. Because babesiosis is more common in vacation spots along the East Coast - Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Rhode Island - the report said doctors have assumed many of these patients were infected elsewhere.

But, with the finding of the Babesia microti protozoa in the mice in Greenwich, the report said it’s clear the parasite also can be found in the western corner of the state.

“We’ve found it in Fairfield County, right next to New York,” Magnarelli said. “We believe it’s spreading.”

In Fairfield County, where Lyme disease is widespread, co-infection with babesiosis isn’t new. Maggie Shaw of Newtown, one of the founders of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force, has tangled with babesiosis. So has Mary Beth Olah,� another task force member.

“It’s been four years, and I’m still being treated for both,” Olah said. “The doctors think, with co-infection, it’s harder to diagnose and treat the two diseases.”

“The physicians around here know so little about Lyme disease,” Shaw said. “They know even less about babesiosis.”

The Babesia microti protozoa attaches to human red blood cells, feeds on them and kills them. Symptoms of the disease include chills, fatigues, night sweats, muscle aches and headaches.

“The headaches were the worst,” said Shaw, who is still being treated for babesiosis.

Like malaria, it can be a hard disease to cure. Shaw is on a combination of Mepron, an anti-parasitic drug, and antibiotics.

“It helps, but it’s very tricky,” Shaw said. “I’m fine until I go off them. Then a few weeks later, I slowly begin to get sick again.”

Like Lyme disease, babesiosis probably is under-reported. People can mistake it for a summer flu. But unlike the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, doctors can do a blood test that can find the ring-shaped Babesia microti in red blood cells.

“You look at the labs, and if you have a low red blood cell count, you have to consider babesiosis,” said UConn’s Shanley.

The disease is most serious for the elderly, those who have compromised immune systems, or those who have had their spleens removed.

“Spleens are big filters,” Shanley said. “People without them are prone to infections. With something like babesiosis, they have trouble fighting it off.”

Contact Robert Miller

at bmiller@newstimes.com

http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Scientists-fear-rise-of-tick-borne-disease-47751.php

Med Vet Entomol. 2009 Dec;23(4):393-8.
Márquez FJ, Millán J, Rodríguez-Liébana JJ, García-Egea I, Muniain MA.

Departamento Biología Animal, Biología Vegetal y Ecología, Universidad de Jaén, 23071 Jaén, Spain. jmarquez@ujaen.es

A total of 559 fleas representing four species (Pulex irritans, Ctenocephalides felis, Ctenocephalides canis and Spilopsyllus cuniculi) collected on carnivores (five Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus, six European wildcat Felis silvestris, 10 common genet Genetta genetta, three Eurasian badger Meles meles, 22 red fox Vulpes vulpes, 87 dogs and 23 cats) in Andalusia, southern Spain, were distributed in 156 pools of monospecific flea from each carnivore, and tested for Bartonella infection in an assay based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the 16 S-23 S rRNA intergenic spacer region. Twenty-one samples (13.5%) were positive and the sequence data showed the presence of four different Bartonella species. Bartonella henselae was detected in nine pools of Ctenocephalides felis from cats and dogs and in three pools of Ctenocephalides canis from cats; Bartonella clarridgeiae in Ctenocephalides felis from a cat, and Bartonella alsatica in Spilopsyllus cuniculi from a wildcat. DNA of Bartonella sp., closely related to Bartonella rochalimae, was found in seven pools of Pulex irritans from foxes. This is the first detection of B. alsatica and Bartonella sp. in the Iberian Peninsula. All of these Bartonella species have been implicated as agents of human diseases. The present survey confirms that carnivores are major reservoirs for Bartonella spp.

PMID: 19941605 [PubMed - in process]

Written by Susan Wolf
Tuesday, 01 December 2009 00:00

The results of last fall’s tick study in four Fairfield County towns, including Redding, shows that 90% of the adult ticks that were collected were infected with Lyme bacteria, compared to 60% in 2007. Lyme disease is considered a major health issue in Redding.

Overall, the study found 90% of ticks tested were infected with the Lyme bacteria, with the range from 98% in Newtown to 88% in Redding.

The latest results mark the end of the second phase of a study coordinated by the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance. As part of the study, deer tick populations in the four Fairfield County towns — Redding, Ridgefield, Newtown and Bethel — were examined in the fall 2008 and spring 2009. Then Dr. Eva Sapi, the molecular biologist and tick-borne disease expert from the University of New Haven who led the study, analyzed both the number of ticks found in each of the participating towns and the proportion of ticks that carry the bacteria that cause Lyme disease and the parasite of babesiosis, a malaria-like illness. Dr. Sapi is an expert in the collection and analysis of deer ticks.

Symptoms of Lyme disease can range from fever, chills and body aches to joint swelling, weakness, severe fatigue, trouble concentrating and temporary paralysis. Some, but not all, who have the disease will see a bull’s-eye rash between three and 30 days after infection.

Previous studies have reported a rise over the last 10 or more years in the percentage of ticks found in Connecticut that carry not only the infectious agents that cause Lyme, but also ehrlichiosis and babesosis, the alliance said in the press release it issued last week.

Newtown, Bethel, Ridgefield and Redding had ticks analyzed for the Babesia microti parasite in 2008 and with an infection rate of 30%, were found to be well above previously reported levels of 5% to 8%, said Dr. Georgina Scholl, research chair for the alliance. She set up the tick study.

The three sites in Redding are Fox Run Road Trail, Topstone Park and John Read Middle School in the vicinity of the Project Adventure area Dr. Sapi collected 224 ticks in hour-long drags at these sites. Of 181 Redding ticks tested for the Lyme bacteria, 159, or 88%, were positive. Of 153 tested for babesiosis, 44, or 29%, were positive.

Combining results from all towns on the babesiosis parasite, the study found a 30% infection rate with a range from 28% in Newtown to Ridgefield’s 33%.

Ms. Scholl said the alliance’s study is the first systematic study of ticks from specific locations across Fairfield County, which has had had the highest number of Lyme disease cases in the state for many years.

“This information will help towns understand better how to protect their residents from these infections, and will reinforce the need for vigilance in controlling ticks. This study will also serve as a baseline for future studies of changes in tick populations that may result from various intervention programs such as deer population reduction programs,” Dr. Scholl said.

Another important aspect of the study, she added, is that it has collected ticks from parts of town that are in close proximity to school play areas, ball fields, parks and trails.

“Ongoing studies by others have used ticks submitted by individuals with unknown places of origin,” Dr. Scholl said.

In the third phase of the tick study, which began this week, ticks will be collected, counted and analyzed for the presence of co-infections borrelia, babesia and ehrlichiosis in the same tick. Rates will be compared with the first two years to see if the high rates of infection previously found in the 17-town alliance are an indication of an overall trend or are indicative of local conditions.

Dr. Scholl said on Friday that she expects to get results sooner from the third phase of the study.

She also pointed to a recent study by Columbia University Center for Infection and Immunity on ticks collected in nearby Westchester County, N.Y., where 65% of ticks were infected with the Lyme bacteria, and a total of 72% were infected with either Lyme or one of four other tick-borne diseases. The New York study found 32% of ticks infected with more than one pathogen.

In its press release, the alliance pointed to a new program in Redding, BeSafeRedding.org, that matches homeowners to volunteer hunters. The program “acknowledges the direct correlation between high numbers of deer and higher numbers of ticks,” the release said. Tick experts now know, the release said, that ticks need deer to complete their breeding cycle; if there are fewer deer, then fewer ticks will lay eggs successfully.”

In Newtown, a committee is discussing how best to reduce tick infection risk. A regional HVCEO (Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials) Lyme Task Force is also educating the public on the need to reduce the source of ticks (www.hvceo.org/lymemain.php).

The Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance is a 17-town appointed deer study group. Its role is to educate communities “on the role of high deer numbers in supporting the breeding of ticks and their diseases.”

More information is available on the alliance Web site at www.deeralliance.com and on the state health department Web site, www.ct.gov/dph/

The tick study is funded by the participating towns and their tick-borne disease task forces.

http://acorn-online.com/joomla15/thereddingpilot/news/localnews/43000-tick-study-results-infection-rate-stands-at-90.html